Does “Miss Congeniality” ever win the crown? I can’t recall it ever happening, although she’s elemental to every pageant. The Miss Congeniality of the holiday season is, of course, the cranberry, which is so woven into the fabric of our holidays. Yet, rarely a star.
There’s the obligatory sauce on our thanksgiving table, that has an important job of balancing the richness. In the business we call this a “gastric,” although you may have just thought it was a yummy flavor enhancer… same thing. Miss Congeniality plays nice with everyone at the pageant, and cranberries play nice with everyone on your Thanksgiving plate. Jump to recipe
Cranberry sauce and those strung on trees are the obvious places where fresh berries turn up – unless you are in the canned camp with your sauce. Since Thanksgiving is very much about tradition, I won’t fault that preference, and often serve both because a feeder wants only happy eaters. I do also feel they’re essential for holiday parties, when I use them as a base on platters of appetizers or passed hors d’oeuvre.
Although you may encounter cranberry-orange scones, those are dried berries – that I do consider a huge improvement over raisins any day. This is only time of year you can get fresh, though. While playing in the kitchen early last fall, I created an “Autumn Breakfast Bake” using frozen cranberries, that I am just going to have to call incredible. It works well with fresh berries as well, and you really ought to make a batch if you have guests coming for the holidays.
Based on the success of that particular round of playing in the kitchen last year, I decided to play some more this year. I also had an overwhelming urge to bring home a jumbo bag of berries that caught my eye, but only need a fraction of that for my sauce this year.
The cheery little orbs do play well in cakes and cookies, and deliver that brilliant pop of color that nobody can resist. Other places to play with the official berry of the season would be in a holiday mocktail, in your favorite scone recipe, or roast them alongside seasonal vegetables.
I decided to riff on a classic leftovers cheat where you use cranberry sauce with cheese and puff pastry for a Black Friday pick-me-up tart. For my creation, I nestled smoked gouda (Follow Your Heart brand) and a few of these can-do berry halves into a puff pastry parcel for a flavor combo similar to apples and cheese. It was good, but a recent batch of apple butter beckoned, and I added that for a bit more definitive sweetness. These will likely appear at a gathering soon.
So, if you love that “It’s beginning to look a lot like holiday meal season” feeling, and your family won’t disown you for tampering with tradition, throw some cranberries in your apple pie, heat them with the syrup for the pancakes, or add them to a side dish. Maybe having Miss Congeniality at the table will help everyone get along, or at least offer a distraction as needed from any annual tirades.
Back when I worked for the swanky kitchenware shop during cooking school, we had jarred cranberry sauce with orange that I quite liked. Then it disappeared, and was replaced by one with apple, that I did not like. So, clearly I had to take matters into my own hands! I conjured up this recipe at the exact moment that I had a crush on Dijon mustard. It’s the secret ingredient that somehow gives a whisper of creaminess and that ol' je ne sais quoi. A "technique" post about how to make those perfect "supreme" slices of citrus will appear tomorrow.
Ingredients
- 1 bag fresh cranberries
- ½ cup brown sugar
- 2 oranges, zested and juiced
- 1 orange, “supremed”
- 2 Tbsp. Dijon mustard
Instructions
- Heat a saucepan over medium and add the cranberries, sugar and the juice of the oranges.
- Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and let simmer 20 minutes.
- Add zest, orange pieces and Dijon and stir gently to combine. Add a little salt and pepper, then taste, and adjust seasoning. Remove from heat and et cool completely.
