This is our alternative to traditional cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving. Orange and cranberry are a match made in culinary heaven and roasting the orange slices adds a caramel flavor that mellows the sauce. We like to sweeten this sauce with honey to temper the tartness of the cranberries. Cara Cara oranges are our favorite because they are delightfully sweet and aromatic. If you can’t get Cara Cara oranges, a navel orange will do just fine. A small bit of cayenne pepper adds the slightest bit of heat and dimension to this sauce, but if you don’t like it you can omit it.
Cranberries naturally have a lot of pectin, which makes for a lovely thick sauce. We prefer ours chunky but you can certainly purée the finished sauce while it is still hot and then strain through a fine mesh sieve so that the resulting, cooled sauce will actually be a sliceable jelly.