Apple & Chilli Preserve

Apple cooked down with peperoncino — an Italian sweet-hot preserve of the kind that belongs on a cheese board rather than on breakfast toast. The apple gives body and a mild sweetness; the chilli arrives afterwards, as a warmth at the back of the throat rather than an assault.

Sweet-hot preserves exist because sugar and heat do something to fat that neither does alone. Against an aged cheese or a cured meat, the sweetness cuts the richness and the chilli lifts it — which is why a jar like this changes a cheese plate more than an expensive cheese does.

• Italian apple and chilli preserve
• Sweet first, warm afterwards — not fierce
• Made for cheese boards and cured meats
• Also good with pork, chicken and roast vegetables
• The jar that changes a cheese plate

How to use it. A spoonful beside an aged pecorino, a mature cheddar, a blue, or a plate of prosciutto and salami. Warmed and brushed over pork belly or chicken thighs in the last ten minutes of roasting, where it glazes. Stirred into a pan sauce. On a grilled cheese sandwich, where it is genuinely better than any chutney.