Okay, I'll
admit it: my family always ate Ocean
Spray cranberry sauce, the kind that comes in a can. It was fun to open one end, then poke
a hole in the other to eliminate the suction and then watch it go
"plop" onto the serving dish.
Then we sliced it and doled it out, one slice per plate.
The
American Indians ate cranberries long before the settlers showed up—the cranberry
is one native to this country, just like the turkey. You probably learned about
"pemmican" in grade school:
mashed up deer meet and cranberries (no, I'm not going to give you a
recipe for that!). Still, the cranberry did not become a commercial crop until
the nineteenth century and the development of the "wet harvesting"
technique, where the bog is flooded and the cranberries float to the top, where
they are sucked into…umm, I don't know what.
You see, even though I live near a lot of cranberry bogs, I've never
managed to watch a harvest. Any year
now!
Fall Fruit Relish
2 sweet
apples, cored and chopped finely (not peeled)
2 medium
pears, peeled, cored and chopped
¾ cup fresh
cranberries, coarsely chopped
½ cup of
chopped walnuts or pecans, toasted
½ cup apple
juice
1 tsp
grated orange zest
½ tsp
ground cinnamon (I even grated my own!)
1/8 tsp
ground cloves
Cortland apples, Bosc pears, and cinnamon |
Combine all
the ingredients and refrigerate. This
will keep for about two weeks in the refrigerator, but it's better eaten fresh. It does provide a nice bright note to go with
your turkey and fixings.
HAPPY LEFTOVERS!
It sounds delightful, though I must admit-I love Ocean Spray from the can. Quicker than slicing and dicing too!
ReplyDeleteI like the tube of Ocean Spray too Kat! But this week my hub clamored for something more elegant. So I tried the recipe that was in the New York Times this week--also with apples and cranberry, and fresh jalapeno and ginger. It was very tasty!
ReplyDeleteHappy black Friday everyone. Are you going shopping?
Cranberries might just be my very favorite part of Thanksgiving. I make it fresh, though. It's the easiest thing in the world.
ReplyDeleteBut this year, I was the only one who liked cranberries! Hah! More for moi! I might try this fruit relish next year for the people who don't love cranberries.
~ Krista
And no, I'm not shopping -- I'm working toward a deadline!
We are a strictly raw cranberry relish family. My daughter used to insist on the canned jelly, but I got tired of throwing most, if not all, of it out when she never got around to eating it
ReplyDeleteThis year's relish:
2 cups cranberries (fresh or frozen)
1/4 lemon (no seeds but everything else)
1/2 orange (same)
Try to get organic since the peel is going in
about 1/3 cup sugar (try less and taste, it depends on the cranberries and your taste buds)
Pop all this in the food processor and chop it up.
You end up with lovely fresh tasting stuff that looks like crushed garnets.