A friend of mine blogged yesterday that she was making cranberry chutney. “That’s a nice idea”, I thought; I’ve actually never made chutney before, so I asked her for the recipe, and bought some cranberries today. And got Pete to fetch down my preserving pan from the top of the cupboard.

Of course, me being me, I decided to add three apples that were going soft. Here’s what I did.

Put two punnets of cranberries (which came to 14.25oz) and three dessert apples, peeled/cored/sliced (which came to 9.25oz) into the preserving pan. This neatly came to 23.5oz, which was as near as dammit 1.5 times the cranberries in Maureen’s recipe, so I had something to go by.

Added 3 tablespoons of red wine vinegar, juice and zest of 1.5 oranges (because I’d used half to glaze the gammon earlier), 21 fl oz of red wine, and 6oz castor sugar. And then I wondered whether a red chilli might jazz it up, so I cut one up very finely, and hurled it in.

Brought it to the boil, and then simmered it for about 1 hour 10 minutes, by which time it was going gloop in a satisfactory minute. I decanted it into a bowl to cool down, because I wanted to wash the pan and get it put away.

I sterlised four glass jars in the oven, and then transferred the chutney when it was cool enough. The chilli gives it a real kick, and it’s utterly gorgeous.