Christmas Chutney

I wasn't going to give a recipe for chutney. Countless recipes are but a google search away, and, failing that, the British celebrity chefs have the market pretty well covered.  So I thought I'd simply follow the Christmas Chutney recipe from Nigella Christmas and have done with it.  But my plans came unstuck when I tried to source the 500g frozen cranberries that the recipe calls for.  I know frozen cranberries exist, I'm sure I have seen them in the supermarket before, but do you think I could locate any when I needed them? Having already mentally committed to the chutney recipe, I have made the necessary adjustments to cater for the substitution of dried cranberries.

 Ingredients

Approx 1kg Granny Smith apples, peeled and cored (to yield 750g apple), chopped into a 1cm dice
250 g dried cranberries
250 g pitted dates, quartered
1 onion, chopped
zest and juice of 1 orange
300g caster sugar
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp salt
500ml white wine vinegar

Method

Put all the ingredients into a large pot, stir, and put over a medium heat. Let reach a boil, turn down, and simmer for about an hour. You may need to add a dash of water from time to time to keep it from getting too jammy.

While you wait for your chutney to simmer down to a soft pulp, sterilise your jars.  Preheat your oven to 140 degrees centigrade.  Wash your jars in very hot, soapy water, and rinse under the hot tap. Put your jars in the oven until dry. Do not touch the insides of your jars or lids at any stage as this would undo all your sterilisation efforts. The jars should still be warm when you put the chutney in to prevent the glass from cracking.    

The resulting chutney is rich and sweet, with a balancing hit of vinegar.  It goes magnificently with a cheese board, especially when there is blue cheese involved, and complements cold meats, particularly turkey, which is just as well really.