Recipe - Red Onion Marmalade

We are big cheese fans in this house, especially during the colder months. We often take turns with our friends to host wine and cheese nights (nowhere near as pretentious as it sounds, I promise!) where we gather together as many different cheeses, crackers, chutneys and pickles as we can muster from local delis and farmers markets and scoff the lot, washed down with copious amounts of red wine.

If you scour your local deli you'll find there are some amazing chutneys and pickles out there for cheese and I've come up with a few of my own too, which I'll post over the coming months. This particular recipe was born out of a need for a tracklement to accompany baked cheeses such as camembert or grilled goats cheese, where a pickle is just too strong and overpowers the cheese. We've also found ourselves eating it with my homemade chicken liver pate (recipe to come!) and toasted crusty bread, so it's pretty versatile.

You will need

1kg red onions
2 cloves of garlic
70g butter
2tbsp olive oil
70g golden caster sugar
1tbsp fresh thyme leaves (or 1tsp of dried thyme)
pinch of chilli flakes
salt and pepper to taste
half a bottle of red wine
325ml red wine vinegar
100ml port
a suitable jar, sterilised

Peel, trim, halve and thinly slice the onions and thinly slice the garlic

Melt the butter and oil over a medium heat, add the onions and garlic to the pan. Sprinkle in the sugar, thyme, chilli flakes and seasoning.

Stir, reduce heat to low-medium and cook for 45-50 minutes (uncovered), stirring occasionally to prevent sticking

When the onions are soft and sticky, pour in your wine, vinegar and port

Simmer (uncovered) for 25-30 minutes over a medium-high heat, until the onions are darkened and the liquid has reduced by around two thirds

When drawing a spoon across the bottom of the pan clears a track which fills with syrupy juice, you are done.

Decant your marmalade into your jar (I sterilise by washing with soapy water and rinsing with boiling water from the kettle) and allow to cool

This luscious marmalade will keep for upto three months in the fridge but it rarely hangs around that long!

Let me know if you try this recipe and what you like to eat it with!