Lemony Pear-Pineapple Preserves

I recently had the strange dilemma of having a bowl of pears on the turn, and a piece of sour pineapple in the fridge.  What do you do with that combination?  I thought of making pear jam after seeing Patty's post on Instagram, but found it hard to locate a recipe in my usual cookbooks.  Turning to Sarabeth's Bakery - From My Hands to Yours, a book I had owned for years but never used, I struck gold - Sarabeth had a recipe for Lemony Pear-Pineapple Preserves.  Fabulous - I could kill two birds with one stone, figuratively speaking.

The resulting preserves contain lovely chunks of pear, and might have had chunks of pineapple too, except that I suspect I processed the pineapple too finely.  It did not  matter - the end result was a wonderful, golden, sunny preserve, quite sweet, but then again, it is a preserve.

Here it is spread on a crumpet:

If you too would like to try these preserves, you will need:

1/2 pineapple, peeled, cored and cut into 1" cubes

450g pears, peeled, cored and cut into 1/4" cubes

2 cups sugar

1/2 of 1/3 cup lemon juice

1 vanilla bean or 1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Put the pineapple cubes int a food processor and chop coarsely.  Strain the juice into a non-reactive saucepan, reserving the pineapple pieces.

Add the pears to the pineapple juice, and bring to the boil over medium heat, stirring frequently, then reduce the heat to low and simmer the fruit for ~ 15 minutes or until tender.

Add the reserved pineapple, the sugar and the lemon juice to the pan, together with the vanilla seeds (if using a vanilla pod), split the bean lengthwise and put it into the pan as well, and return the mixture to  a simmer.  Cook until the pears are soft and chunky and the mixture has thickened (ie when you run your finger through the mixture on the back of the spoon, it doesn't run in to fill the gap).  This will take around 25 minutes.   Remove from the heat.  (If using vanilla essence, stir it in at this stage).

Pour the mixture into sterilised jars, screw on the lids and allow to cool completely in the jars.