Summer Cranberry Sauce #Recipe from Maya Corrigan

I love cranberries and usually buy bags of them in December to freeze for use long after the holidays. Last year, though, I didn't buy enough cranberries to last until summer. When I had leftover chicken recently, I craved cranberry sauce and tried a recipe that jazzes up canned cranberries so the sauce tastes homemade.The recipe, originally by Ina Garten, appeared in a New York Times article.

I call this "summer cranberry sauce" because in the fall and winter, I would definitely use fresh cranberries to make sauce. 

Ingredients

1 14-ounce can whole berry cranberry sauce 
½ Granny Smith apple, peeled and grated
¼ cup chopped pecans (or walnuts)
¼ cup raisins
½ teaspoon grated orange zest
3 tablespoons freshly squeezed orange juice

When I went to make the sauce, I discovered that the oranges I'd bought a few days before had been eaten. I didn't have time to run to the store before dinner, so I improvised by using 2 tablespoons of orange marmalade, which has orange zest in it, and 1 tablespoon of orange liqueur, Grand Marnier. I added a bit of lemon juice because I thought the mixture was on the sweet side. 

Warm the cranberry sauce over low to medium heat in a small saucepan. Add the grated apple and the orange juice and zest to the pan. Bring the sauce to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer the cranberry mix for 15 minutes, stirring every few minutes.

Take the pan off the heat and stir in the nuts and raisins. Move the sauce to a bowl and chill it. Serve it cold or at room temperature. 

Cranberry sauce goes well with summer's fresh produce.

The next time I make this recipe, I'll try chopping the apple instead of grating it. I'll also make sure I have an orange on hand. 

Visit my post about cranberry history and trivia. You'll also find links there to cranberry recipes by the Mystery Lovers' Kitchen crew. 

READERS: What's your favorite way to make or eat cranberries?

📚

Maya Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mystery series. It features a young cafe manager and her young-at-heart grandfather solving murders in a Chesapeake Bay town. Each book has five suspects, five clues, and Granddad’s five-ingredient recipes. Maya has taught college courses in writing, literature, and detective fiction. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords.

Visit her website for book news, mystery history and trivia, and easy recipes. Sign up for her newsletter there. She gives away a free book to one subscriber each time she sends out a newsletter. Follow her on Facebook.

A PARFAIT CRIME: Five-Ingredient Mystery #9

Set in a quaint Chesapeake Bay town, the latest novel in Maya Corrigan’s Five-Ingredient Mysteries brings back café manager Val Deniston and her recipe columnist grandfather – a sleuthing duo that shares a house, a love of food and cooking, and a knack for catching killers.

At the site of a fatal blaze, Val’s boyfriend, a firefighter trainee, is shocked to learn the victim is known to him, a woman named Jane who belonged to the local Agatha Christie book club—and was rehearsing alongside Val’s grandfather for an upcoming Christie play being staged for charity. Just as shocking are the skeletal remains of a man found in Jane’s freezer. Who is he and who put him on ice?

After Val is chosen to replace Jane in the play, the cast gathers at Granddad’s house to get to work—and enjoy his five-ingredient parfaits—but all anyone can focus on is the bizarre real-life mystery. When it’s revealed that Jane’s death was due to something other than smoke inhalation, Val and Granddad retrace the victim’s final days. As they dig into her past life, their inquiry leads them to a fancy new spa in town—where they discover that Jane wasn’t the only one who had a skeleton in the cooler.

Read an excerpt and see where to buy A Parfait Crime.  

Praise for A Parfait Crime

📚