Cranberry Sauce (Homemade, from Fresh Cranberries)

Method

1. 1Tip the cranberries onto a tray and pick through them: throw out any soft, shrivelled or brown ones and any stems, then rinse and drain. Grate 1 teaspoon of zest from an orange, taking only the orange layer and none of the white pith, and then squeeze 120 ml of juice from the oranges. Do this right before cooking, because squeezed juice turns bitter if it stands for an hour.
2. 2Put the cranberries, sugar, orange juice, water and salt into a medium saucepan. Use stainless steel or enamel, since the acid in the berries reacts with bare aluminium. The sugar will look like far too much against the berries, but cranberries are very tart and they need all of it.
3. 3Set the pan over medium-high heat and stir until the sugar dissolves and the liquid boils, about 4 minutes. Turn the heat down to medium-low so it bubbles gently and simmer for 8 minutes, stirring now and then. After 3 or 4 minutes the berries start to burst with small pops, and that releases the pectin that will thicken the sauce. Frozen berries go in as they are, with no thawing, and need about 2 minutes longer.
4. 4Check the sauce at 8 minutes: about two thirds of the berries should have burst while the rest still hold their shape, and the sauce should look loose and syrupy, like a thin jam. Drag a spoon across the bottom of the pan; the track it leaves should close again after a second or two. Take the pan off the heat at this point even if the sauce seems too thin, because it thickens as it cools, and anything past 15 minutes of cooking makes it gluey and bitter.
5. 5Off the heat, stir in the orange zest; added at the end it keeps its fragrance and does not turn bitter in the boil. Taste a spoonful, carefully, it is hot. If it is sharper than you like, stir in 1 more tablespoon of the sugar now, while the sauce is hot enough to dissolve it.
6. 6Scrape the sauce into a bowl and leave it uncovered at room temperature for about 1 hour. It looks too runny at first. As it cools it sets to a soft, spoonable jam, with whole and half-burst berries in a glossy ruby syrup. Cover the bowl only once the sauce is cold.
7. 7Refrigerate the covered sauce. It keeps for up to 10 days, so you can make it 3 days before the dinner, and the flavour settles in the meantime. Take the bowl out of the fridge 30 minutes before serving so the sauce is not stone cold, and put it on the table next to the roast turkey.