Autumn Recipes: Cranberry Relish

I like calling homemade cranberry sauce ‘relish’ because it allows me a particular set of expectations. Firstly, it will not be jellied, or from a can (in spite of that variety being a sugary guilty pleasure of mine). Second, it will have a nice shredded consistency that reminds one it started as fruit. Third, it suggests I will deeply enjoy (read: relish) it, and I do hate to love a pun.

The peculiar thing about my love for calling it relish, though, is my utter dislike for its conventional counterpart, plain-old-put-it-on-your-hot-dog relish. Love pickles. Hate relish. It’s too sweet, and not pickley enough.

In 7th grade science class, our teacher liked to make us care by applying science to food. I don’t recall exactly how cranberry relish tied into our lesson plan, but I do remember I was the only one who liked it, and I was certainly the only one who begged her mother to go to the store for fresh cranberries so I could make it again for my family. It’s been that way ever since; the only time I indulge in the canned beast is at someone else’s holiday (and I do so with gusto).

Few variations have taken place since then, one being I prepare it in a slow-cooker now to free up stove space during busy holidays, because this is a thing that benefits from long simmering anyway. Sometimes I get a little crazy about throwing in miscellaneous ingredients, but I’ll spare you that adventure. The point is if you like tart fruits, this shit is a gold mine. It’s the perfect counterpoint to the savory stuffings, sweet potatoes, buttery rolls, creamy mashed potatoes, and whatever the hell you’ve been drinking to survive another holiday with your family (Gin? Check.)

Is there anything prettier in the world?

Cranberry Relish  Makes approx 5 cups

You will need:

• (2) 12oz bags of fresh cranberries
• 1 lime
• 1 tangerine (or clementines, or a sweet citrus)
• 3/4c warm water
• 1/4c honey

Empty your berries into a large bowl or pot with some cool water. The majority should float. Swish them around to make sure they are rinsed free of dirt and debris. While you’re doing this, stay alert for stems to remove, and for berries that look damaged or rotten; a healthy cranberry can vary in color as seen above, but should be firm and smooth. If it looks brownish or has soft spots, discard it.

Transfer the berries from your rinse water to your slow-cooker and add a little less than a cup of water (Your needs may vary; my lid doesn’t fit properly so I add more liquid in anticipation of evaporation), enough to coat the bottom of your pot. Squeeze in the juice of one lime. Don’t throw lime wedges in unless you intend to be very vigilant about removing them later on; I thought I’d be cute with my first attempt at Pumpkin Applesauce and put lemon wedges in there, and got a big mouthful of soft lemon rind that lingered in my mouth for hours.

Peel your tangerine. You’ll want to get the seeds out of there for your own sanity, and here’s what I’ve found is the easiest way to get it all done in a hurry:

Curse you, seeds.

Divide your peeled fruit in half. Using a butter knife, paring knife, or something else with a small manageable blade, insert it into the middle of the fruit and cut upward toward the center of the wedges. If you leave the rounded back intact your fruit will flop open as above, like one of those little grade-school fortune tellers. Squeeze gently from the corners toward the cut and you should be able to work all the seeds out without sacrificing much in the way of juice or time.

Cut the fruit into small pieces and throw it into your cooker. Bonus points: Peel each individual segment and only include the actual orange meat, thus wasting all the time you just saved with the seeds.

With your fruit included, drizzle honey over the whole thing and set your cooker on Low for 7 hours. After awhile the cranberries will begin to burst open with cute little pops and hisses of resignation. You may also see a whitish froth floating on top (though I notice this more in stovetop preparation), and this is fine; you can stir it back in or skim it off in accordance with your preference.

Toward the end you’ll want to taste it and see if the sweet-to-tart ratio pleases you. If yes, congratulations! If no, adjust accordingly by adding more honey (sugar at this point will probably just make it grainy), or some lemon juice if it’s too sweet.

Finale Cranberry Sauce in Cobalt (Photo credit: cobalt123)

Other people’s variants:

• Thanksgiving 2012: Cherry-Lemon Relish (thebittenword.com)
• Fresh Cranberry Relish for your Thanksgiving Feast! (fork-lore.com)

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Autumn Recipes: Pumpkin Applesauce/Apple Butter

Hey, YouFoodies. I’m still stuffing pumpkin into things, and here’s one I liked so much I did it twice! I adore apple sauce. In fact, it made its way into the inaugural YouFoodIsNotSoGreat post. Apple sauce is one of those things where there are as many varieties as there are people on the planet, probably. I’m a homestyle, chunky-spicy-not-too-sweet kind of gal (Read: lazy), and with this recipe I really hit an amazingly minimalist stride when it came to preparation.

I’ll present you with two versions: the one you slap together and wave your hands in the air like you just don’t care, and the one where you actually put some effort into it. I used a slow-cooker, but simmering on a stove top will probably work just as well as long as you pop in to babysit it from time to time.

Notes: Usually I favor Gala apples for everything, but this time I found Red Delicious at an extreme bargain. I hate Red Delicious. There is nothing delicious about them, from the flavor to the consistency. The only thing they’re good for, honestly, is applesauce. Below where it suggests pumpkin puree, I used fresh and of course I didn’t puree it, because when I say ‘homestyle’ what I mean is I’m indifferent to natural chunks in my foodstuffs. Don’t like raisins? Leave them out. It won’t noticeably affect the flavor. Spices? To taste, as usual, but vague suggestions listed below. The water/juice is just so your slow-cooker has some way to distribute the heat.

Also the longer it cooks the browner it will get, becoming more an apple butter than an apple sauce, and continue cooking or remove from heat according to your preference. It will take on a caramel flavor, helped by the little bit of molasses added in the beginning. It’s good hot and fresh, or cold from the fridge, and reheats pretty well. If you find yours too dry add a little water or juice and you’ll be good to go.

This unappealing russet mush is possibly the best thing I’ve ever put in my mouth… and you can tell your mom I said so.

You’ll Need:

makes about 6 cups

• Approximately 3 pounds of apples
• 1c cooked pumpkin puree
• 1/2c raisins
• 1tsp bottled lemon juice, or squeezed fresh
• 1tsp molasses
• 1tsp cinnamon
• 1tsp cardamom
• 1/2tsp nutmeg
• 1/2tsp ginger
• 1/2tsp cloves
• 2c warm water (or cider. or apple juice. get fancy)

Slapdash method of preparation: (approx. 5 minutes prep)

Willy-nilly, combine water, pumpkin, molasses, lemon and spices in slow-cooker. Core apples and throw them in. Add raisins. Slicing and peeling optional. Set cooker to Low for approximately 8 hours. This will yield a tasty lumpy applesauce with big chewy pieces of skin.

Best $1.99 I ever spent, even though I had to go to three stores to find one.

Slightly more thorough method: (approx. 30 minutes prep)

Combine water, pumpkin, molasses, lemon, and spices in slow-cooker, and whisk to achieve a smooth consistency. Lovingly peel, core, and dice apples, mixing them into the above. Set cooker to Low for approximately 8 hours. After several hours your apples will be soft, and you can blend your sauce to a smooth consistency with an immersion blender.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go eat some more of this delicious slurry while I continue Day Four of Thanksgiving preparation.

 

Read more about food:

• A mystery!
• Autumn Recipes: Pumpkin Ravioli
• There’s a Meme for This…
• Easy Peasy Applesauce Recipe – Le Compote de Pommes (frenchtwistedwoman.com)
• Rum Soaked Raisin Applesauce Spice Cake (lieslmade.com)

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A mystery!

Hello, food pioneers! I have learned something valuable about myself. It’s not like it was a secret, but I have never put it in such plainly edible terms before. I will sometimes forsake something I know I like in favor of trying to get a bargain. This has most recently manifest itself in the form of a 5lb bag of Red Delicious apples that would be better served as a paper weight.

I woke this morning with the intention of making pumpkin bread and casseroles, but my gaze fell upon this bag and I thought I’d dehydrate some apple rings to boot. Turns out NO. Red Delicious, when eaten, feeling charmingly akin to getting Jersey Shore sand in your most unmentionable of places. By which I mean they’re gritty and no matter how much you shift them around in your mouth they hit your tongue and you realize that, no, in fact, you did not get a bargain. They are impossible to peel. They are impossible to slice. Just about all they’re good for is crumbling with your bare hands to feign an impressive feat of strength.

New plan. Since these things are already turning to mush, applesauce. I dug out the trusty crock pot and in the process of ferreting around for seasonings  and lemon wedges, I decided to throw some pumpkin in as well.

Only time will tell if I have chosen poorly.

Either this will be the most disgusting thing ever, or I am some sort of postmodern flavor genius?

Tomorrow’s goal: Pumpkin bread. Pumpkin ravioli. Take pumpkin. Add starch. Eat.

 

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Leeks and things

Friday night Brian picked me up from work and we stopped at the grocery store for our monthly big shop. I’ll do supplemental quick trips every few days for fresh meat or produce, but this is when we get all our non perishables like lunch foods, crackers, and frozen pizzas. I had some homemade chicken stock kicking around in the fridge–the byproduct of meals earlier in the week– so I cast about for things to make into a hearty crock pot soup.

I love crock pots. Ever since buying a house we have become the recipients of several households’ worth of hand-me-down cookware, like so much Island of Misfit Toys. For awhile this meant I had three crock pots; I have two at the moment after gifting a third to my friends’ bachelor pad in hopes they’d start cooking/stop eating peanut butter from the jar and calling it dinner.

But I digress. Crock pots are awesome because they make for virtually effortless cooking and encourage multitasking like a boss. The downside, I learned with several beef stews somehow thinner than the broth from which they were made, is that crock pot recipes require way less liquid than their stove top equivalents. Once you get that in hand all you really need to master is when to add your rice or noodles so you don’t end up with a horrible starch slurry that you force yourself to eat purely because of its cost in components (Been there? Been there.).

I found some big beautiful leeks! I’ve never cooked a leek before in my life, but if a food blog isn’t for taking chances, what is it for? Besides, thanks to YouTube there are instructional videos on every subject, including how to clean and prepare leeks. I began to envision a fabulous mushroom and leek soup, stroking the leeks fondly until everyone in the produce department looked at me like I was a creeper.

The next day dawned snowy. Over my morning coffee I watched all the leek how-to videos, then cut mine up and set them to soak while I worked on the other ingredients.

Soak some leeks, yo.

Let’s talk a minute about cutting boards. They’re big, unwieldy, inconvenient to store, don’t fit in my sink, and require some sort of voodoo to fit in my dishwasher. So I bought a pack of the color-coded flexible cutting mats. They’re not perfect; they slide, and after first use they warp a bit, so again it’s a challenge of where to store them to keep them flat, but at least they’re easy to wash. Pro tip: I wet the underside of mine before I use it so it sticks itself to my counter. Warping and sliding problems solved!

Observe my flat cutting mat! Observe the cheapest mushrooms at the grocery!

As you might have noticed above I didn’t go with any fancy kind of mushroom for this soup (not that I think they would be a bad idea, but white button mushrooms are way more affordable than anything with too many vowels or an exotic name). Don’t make yourself too crazy cutting them; personally I like the homemade feel of irregular sizes and shapes in my cut vegetables.

Then again, I also like making potato snowmen. Your mileage may vary.

My cooking process went something like this, should you be inclined to duplicate.

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