I had all the best intentions. The pineapple looked so so good and I was thinking of grilled pineapple on the barbeque. The fact that we have only had one barbeque in the last 24 months should have signalled something. Alas, nothing grilled – and the pineapple was starting to look like it would end up somewhere other than our bellies. The question was then what to do with it – definitely wasn’t going to feed our worms in the compost. I decided to make something a bit different and ended up with a chilli jam recipe. Of course I didn’t happen to have any chillis – and I had just been shopping – so I felt a bit of substitution coming on……

Recipe:
- 1 pineapple
- 1 or 1-1/2 teaspoons chilli flakes (or use fresh chillis)
- 4 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
- 2 teaspoons crushed ginger
- 20ml fish sauce
- 175g caster sugar
- 50ml mirin (or use white wine vinegar)
Chop pineapple flesh into small chunks – put one half into a food processor. Add chilli, garlic, ginger and fish sauce. Puree and then put into a saucepan with the sugar and mirin. Bring to boil slowly, then turn down and add rest of pineapple. Cook on simmer for up to one hour, the jam will thicken up.
Put into sterilized jars. Once opened keep in the fridge. My pineapple wasn’t that big, this made 2 x 275g jars – almost. One completely full, one about 7/8ths. It has a bit of a bite, the pineapple pieces are very soft, and it is somewhat delicious!