Pear and date Chutney

I love chutney and it is so simple to make so get going. 
I recently bought a chutney made with Porter beer which stimulated the mind so I thought why not try one with a Scottish red ale rather than stout. A bit of internet research confirmed it does happen, beer in chutney. I had some delicious tasting sweet pears so used these as my base but apples would do as well. Went through my store cupboard and found a few ingredients as below so on it went. The great thing is you can mix ingredients as you like, just experiment and try it.
Beautiful with the smoked duck like the one below but really good with any cold meat or cheese. 

This version is an eat soon version for a large gathering but will still store fine and can easily be halved for your own use. It filled 2 of the kilner jars as shown.

Ingredients:

• 2 pears peeled, cored and chopped
• 1 onion (I used red)
• 75g dates roughly chopped
• thumb of grated ginger or 1 tsp powdered ginger
• 75g raisins/sultanas
• 25g cranberries
• 1 tbs cider vinegar
• 1 tbs oil (I used sunflower)
• 1 tbs light brown sugar
• 150ml ale (I used Harvieston Red 9th Legion as below)

Heat the oil in a heavy based pan if you have one, add the onion finely chopped, cover and cook slowly until onion is soft but not burnt, about 10-15mins.

Add the rest of the ingredients and give it all a good stir. Bring to the boil then reduce the heat and cook slowly until all the ale has gone leaving you with a thick chutney consistency. It took me about 30 minutes.

Put into clean jars and that's it so easy.

How about some pate or cheese, chutney and my parsnip bread, yum yum.

It will develop through time but I had some straight away with cheese, it was a success.