You Can Go Your Own Way

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cranberry, ginger, orange, pear, quince, sauce, vanilla

People tend to get touchy about any foods deeply tied to holiday tradition, and the humble cranberry sauce is no exception.  What seems like a simple matter of fruit and sugar has the potential to set off firestorms of difference of opinion.

My mother, for example, is a purist.  She insists on the absolute bare basics: berries, sugar, orange juice.  That’s it; no spices, no weird additions, and do not even think about chutney-izing it.  His Lordship is a fan of the congealed kind that plops out of a can in one tubular, sliceable mass — much to my initial horror, although I’ve since come to accept that we all have our food quirks and you can’t fight them.  You, for all I know, might be of the cabernet and cloves persuasion, or one of those people who blitzes raw berries and whole oranges in the food processor to create a salsa, and that’s okay too.

Me, I’m of a kitchen-sink bent.  I have been known to do all manner of messing with my Thanksgiving condimentation.  For a few years, I was determined to figure out exactly how much of my spice cabinet I could cram into there. (In case you’re curious, allspice and cranberries get along quite nicely together).  Since then, the mania has dampened and I’ve settled on a variant that is neither Mom-simple nor out-of-control wacky, one that is bright and interesting and seasonal and undoubtedly mine.

More than that, it’s me.  In this one ruby concoction is a snapshot of who I am.  Each component offers a fragment of my story and a hint about my experiences and my tastes:  cranberries for the bog obsession I developed in my New England years and quinces for my childhood, orange for my citrus addiction, ginger for all the Asian influences in my California upbringing and adult life, and vanilla bean for my food snobbery.  It all works together and, unlike my earlier spicy pyrotechnics, won’t clash with your turkey.  It’s also versatile enough to spoon over ice cream or use in my favorite post-Thanksgiving leftover application: grilled cheese sandwiches with cranberry sauce.

You’re welcome to try my story, or stick with your own.  Either way, I wish you a rich and vibrant start to your holiday season.

(Unless you’re Canadian, in which case keep up the good work!)

Cranberry Sauce with Quince, Pear and Vanilla
Makes 4 cups

One 12-ounce bag cranberries
2 fresh quinces, peeled, cored and diced OR 1/2 cup quince jam
2 ripe pears, peeled, cored and diced
1 cup granulated sugar
Grated zest of one orange
Juice of one orange, plus enough water to make 1 cup
1 pinkie-sized knob of ginger, grated (approximately 2 teaspoons)
1/2 vanilla bean, split
Pinch of salt

Pick over the cranberries and remove any squishy ones.

If using quince jam, set aside for later addition.  Combine all (remaining) ingredients in a saucepan.

Bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer until the cranberries have popped and the quinces and pears are tender.  Remove from heat and let cool. If using quince jam, stir into the sauce as soon as it comes off the heat.

Cover and refrigerate or freeze until needed.

Notes:

Dumping the cranberries into a large bowl of cold water will help you sort them, since the really squishy ones will sink to the bottom while the good or mostly-good ones will float on the surface.  I then scoop small handfuls of the floating berries and run them between my fingers to catch the partially-squishy ones.

If you can find fresh quinces, they are absolutely worth buying, but some waste is inevitable because of the toughness of the peel and core.  If necessary, use a paring knife instead of a peeler, and slice as close as you can to the core without cutting into it to get as much of the fruit as possible.

If you can’t find fresh quinces, quince jam or paste can frequently be found at Latin American, Indian, Pakistani, Greek and Middle Eastern groceries.

Since this makes a large amount of sauce and we’re a small household even with holiday guests, I usually freeze half the batch for Christmas.  It will keep perfectly well for even longer than that month in the freezer, and that’s one less thing to do when you’re up to your eyeballs in holiday cookie baking and gift wrapping.

And So It Begins

Tags

cookies, lemon, tea

Well, that didn’t take long.  Despite my good intentions, despite the fact that it’s only been two months, and more importantly, despite my student budget, I bought another cookbook.

Oh, I could protest that it was just a lucky find on the bargain table (always a bane to my willpower), that I’ll stop after just this one more, but we all know that’s classic junkie denial, don’t we?  I’ll do it again. I won’t even feel guilty about it until we’re packing to move back, and then I’ll curse the weight and the extra shipping expense.

Although hey, it’s not just a cookbook.  It’s Sally Schneider’s cool treatise on how to improvise in the kitchen, in which she gives basic recipes and shows how she plays with variations to come up with new and creative dishes.  This is already an approach I’ve been trying to take since making the decision a while ago to be less recipe-bound, but with its pretty pictures and enthusiastic narrative, this book is a great source of fresh inspiration.

Riffing on her basic recipe for brown sugar butter cookies produced a sophisticated and pretty shortbread flavored with lemon and speckles of black tea.  One of the suggested variations used Earl Gray tea, which I actually loathe despite my usual love of citrus in all forms.  Since I liked the idea of fusing my tea and cookies, I put together my own lemony blend and made a few other changes.  The new all-me shortbread has a great up-front citrus hit followed by a low note of smoky floral tea, wrapped in a buttery, crumbly matrix.  They’re perfect for a rainy afternoon snack with more tea or, if you feel like mixing your metaphors, a cup of cocoa.  I’ll definitely be trying this again, since I’m now tempted to try darjeeling and spices for a chai feel.

Lemon Black Tea Shortbread
Makes 3 dozen bite-sized cookies
(Adapted from Sally Schneider’s The Improvisational Cook)

1/2 cup (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into 16 pieces
3 tablespoons packed light brown sugar
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon Penzeys dried orange peel, rehydrated in just enough boiling water to cover
Grated zest of one large lemon
Contents of 2 premium black tea bags (approximately 2 teaspoons)
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons cornstarch
Raw sugar for coating

In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat together the butter, sugars and salt until fluffy.  Beat in the vanilla, orange peel, lemon zest and tea.

Whisk together the flour and cornstarch, and add to the sugar mixture in the mixer.  Stir on low speed until just clumping into a ball, then dump out onto a sheet of parchment paper and shape into a long log 1 1/2 to 2 inches in diameter.  Wrap the log tightly in the parchment and then in plastic wrap.  Refrigerate until firm, at least 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 325 F.  Line baking sheets with additional parchment.

Slice the log into 1/8 inch slices.  Roll the edges in the raw sugar to coat, and set the slices on the baking sheets 1 1/2 inches apart.  Bake until golden in the middle and just browning along the edges, approximately 18 minutes.  Remove to a rack to cool.

Like all shortbread, these will keep for days or even weeks in an airtight container, should you have the willpower to keep your hands off.

Notes:

These are two-bite cookies, just right to rest on a saucer.  You could make the log fatter if you would like fewer but bigger cookies.

Since I’m a citrus freak, next time I would increase the amount of lemon zest, but these are plenty lemony as is if you’re not as crazed as I am.

Birthday Pie and Sangria

Tags

almonds, apple, wine

It’s been a quite busy couple of weeks, and although I’ve been baking for two birthdays and the usual Monday scene, I’ve been too scatter-brained to take pictures, so we’re going to have to make do here.  I’ll do a bit of a round-up of the baking, then offer what you’ll have to take on faith is quite a photogenic, in addition to easy and well-received, sangria.

So first things first: His Lordship’s birthday came ’round again, and as usual there is no cake for you! because he turns up his nose at cake and demands pie instead.  Since it’s prime apple and pear season, he usually gets some variation on one or the other, and this year, I found this perfect recipe by Tartelette at exactly the right time.  Since I don’t currently have tart molds, I made it as one big tart instead, with locally-grown Cameo and Pink Lady apples baked with maple syrup instead of honey.  It was quite fabulous, especially the frangipane custard layer.  The one change I’d make next time is to slice the apples just a smidgen thicker for a more toothsome texture, even if they won’t layer as prettily as they did in the (sadly mediocre) picture above.

For the other birthday person, who thankfully does not ‘meh’ cake and asked for anything chocolate, I made dark chocolate cupcakes from the same Scharffenberger base recipe behind my uber-coconutty German Chocolate Cupcakes.

As part of the birthday celebrations, there was quite a raucous get-together for which I improvised some sangria, since I don’t do beer and the amusing set of liquor laws here makes wine readily accessible at the supermarket, but hard alcohol means an extra trip to a separate store.  By popular demand (by which I mean two people asked for it), here is the recipe:

Ice-Breaker Sangria
Serves 6-8

2 bottles inexpensive, non-oaky white wine
1/3 cup sherry
3 oranges, 1 sliced thinly and 2 juiced (preferably blood oranges, but navel or valencia are fine)
1 lemon, sliced thinly
1 lime, sliced thinly
1 eating apple, sliced thinly
1/4 cup sugar, dissolved in an equal amount of boiling water

Combine everything in a large pitcher and refrigerate for at least an hour to let flavors combine.

Serve over ice.

Notes:

I used California pinot grigio here, but it’s a really flexible recipe and you could use whatever strikes your fancy, including swapping red or rose for white. I’d just add two cautions: don’t use chardonnay unless it’s aged in neutral barrels, because the oak will overwhelm the fruit, and don’t waste your best wine here.  You actually want  to use the cheap, unobtrusive stuff in sangria.