As the frosts of winter creep up on us its time to use up the last of the apples, picked at the end of our boating season in September.

For us, Autumn is chutney season, and anything else which uses large quanties of apples. This includes the various jellies we make, and one of my favourites is Chilli and Apple Jelly. Its probably no secret that I swim at the shallow end of the chilli pool, and whilst we sell huge quantities of Blow Your Head off Chilli Jam and the even hotter Scotch Bonnet Chutney, I find my level with the humble Chilli Apple Jelly.

This is a jelly which is all about subtlety, with just the lightest tingle added to a delightful apple jelly. On of the interesting things about using foraged ingredients is the unpredicatbility of the end result. This year we used some rather small apples which literally burst from their skins at the first touch of boiling water, releasing a fantastic apple favour and thus forming a great base for the jelly.

To cap the jelly off we add a few grams of blitzed Birds Eye Chillies at the potting stage, the fragments hovering in the amber preserve and offering little snaps of extra chilli heat to ham and cheese.

A triumph of subtlety - just like me really!