rhubarb and clemetine chutney

I've already mentioned how I DO like rhubarb. A kind neighbour has taken this to heart and has donated plentiful amounts of the fruit to us over the last couple of months and I had reached the stage where I had a glut. We've eaten fool, ice cream, pie and tart and the only way forward now seems to be chutney.

I came across a rhubarb and tangerine chutney and the colours in the picture were amazingly jewel like (pink and orange) and I just had to make it. However I failed at the first stumbling block because the supermarket had every orange fruit except tangerines, so I just bought a clementine instead.

The final step of the recipe is to add the rhubarb, I weighed a fresh bundle - not quite enough - added it to the pan and went to the veg basket to add a little slightly older rhubarb to make up the quantities. Boy wondered what on earth was going on when I started doing a Zulu style dance around the kitchen and shouting 'oh my god, oh my god' until I explained I'd seen a dead mouse in the veg basket! Then I noticed that one of the rhubarb stalks I had removed from the basket was extremely rotten and was missing it's end, I was not prepared to check but felt a bit calmer until Boy returned with fascinated sisters in tow and confirmed it was definitely a dead mouse. Meanwhile the chutney was bubbling away and the rhubarb, meant to be slightly cooked was busy stewing and what to do? Add the dead mouse infested rhubarb or not, and then do I enter the chutney in the fete and do I give a jar as a gift to the aforementioned kind neighbour?

Time for some advice from mother. She told me I was being ridiculous, for all I knew the rhubarb may have already had a number of decomposing creatures on it in the wild and any way it was being cooked wasn't it? Just in time hubby came home to save the day. As I had hoped and suspected the dead mouse was in fact a rotten piece of rhubarb - it just goes to show that all is not perfect in a bloggers world!

Anyhow, my chutney looks no where near as exotic as the one I was trying to make but IF in a months time, when it has matured (in time for the Amberley fete), it does 'work especially well when partnered with Chinese-style roast duck or with cold meats such as ham or gammon' I shall share the recipe. At the moment it tastes rather like Cumberland sauce so I think in flavour terms it bodes well.