Food Network Magazine (November 2009)
As we said before, we just love cranberry sauces. And we really liked the Jellied Cranberry Sauce we tried out earlier. Simple, basic and delicious, it's the sort of polite, restrained gelatin you'd serve at a country-club luncheon.
But we wanted to try something with a little more texture, a little more edge.
If our earlier Jellied Cranberry Sauce was a country-club society girl, this Nutty Cranberry Relish is the society girl who's started mussing up her hair and ditching school to make her own jewelry.
Interestingly, this Nutty Cranberry Relish only has a few more ingredients than that Jellied Cranberry Sauce: orange, orange zest and toasted pecans.
But those few ingredients -- plus the fact that you cook the cranberries for less time, leaving more of them whole -- gives this relish a great, hefty texture and a really nice crunch. And you really taste the apples here, unlike in the Jellied Cranberry Sauce.
The orange and the zest -- we used four strips of zest instead of just one, because, why not? -- really brightened the dish and added a whole new layer of flavor.
So take a walk on cranberry sauce's slightly wilder side -- you'll be very glad you did!
More Thanksgiving Suggestions From The Bitten Word >>
Nutty Cranberry Relish
Food Network Magazine (November 2009)
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(This photo: Food Network Magazine)
INGREDIENTS
1 12-ounce bag of fresh or frozen cranberries
1 1/2 cups sugar, plus more to taste
1 strip orange or lemon zest
1 orange, quartered (unpeeled), seeds removed
1 tart apple, such as Granny Smith, quartered (unpeeled), seeds removed
1/2 cup toasted pecans
DIRECTIONS
1. Empty cranberries into a saucepan, reserving 1/2 cup in a small bowl. To the saucepan, add 1 cup of the sugar, the lemon or orange zest, and 2 tablespoons water. Cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, until the sugar dissolves and the cranberries are soft, about 10 minutes.
2. Increase the heat to medium and cook until the cranberries burst, about 12 minutes. Reduce the heat to low and stir in the reserved cranberries. Add sugar, salt and pepper to taste.
3. Roughly chop the apple and orange in a food processor with the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar. Fold into the cranberry sauce along with pecans. Let cool to room temperature before serving.
