Cranberry relish

I am a very visual person. I have to concentrate to understand puns, because when I hear a word, I see it written, so playing around with meanings and homophones passes me by.

So believe me when I say that, although this relish tastes really good, the absolutely best bit about it is the way it sounds when you cook it.

We did our appropriation-of-traditions thing and had ourselves a little Thanksgiving dinner. It was just the two of us and because it isn't really our holiday I felt quite relaxed about paring things back, and making just the elements of the meal that I think sound the most appealing. It's freeing to eat things because they sound nice and not because tradition dictates it.

I'd bought some fresh cranberries and frozen them, without much notion of what I would do with them, but then I decided that a sauce or relish really was in order. I read a lot of recipes and was disappointed by nearly all of them - they were just cranberries and sugar, and I didn't want to put jam on my meat. Martha Stewart's cranberry and ginger sounded much more my cup of tea, although it was far too big a batch. I altered the proportions a bit to suit our tastes, and it made one medium-sized ramekin of sauce, which will see us through Christmas as well.

Cranberry, chilli and ginger relish

75g caster sugar
75g fresh or frozen cranberries
1 green chilli, deseeded and finely sliced
1tbs water
1tbs grated ginger
2tbs red wine vinegar

Combine the sugar, cranberries, chilli, water and ginger in a small saucepan and bring gently to the boil, swirling to dissolve the sugar. Boil for about 10 minutes, enjoying the sound of the cranberries popping and sighing and the slightly higher-pitched bursting of the sugary bubbles around them. Stir in the vinegar and bottle in a sterile glass jar.

We had it with a buttery turkey breast joint, green beans and soy-caramel glazed sweet potatoes. Earlier on in the day I'd thought about making mashed potatoes and gravy as well, but decided that this was plenty of food - but mash would have been welcome if any unexpected guests had dropped by. For dessert we had pumpkin babas, so while our meal was pared back, it certainly wasn't austere.