This will be our first Christmas with big family in many moons.
May yours be one of great peace and joy.
Here’s a link back to our favorite Christmas meal,
Give it a spin!
Love,
E & M
Author: urbanmonique
I cook, write, throw flies, and play music in the Great Pacific Northwet.
Cranberries!
Cranberries are wonderful, ya know? Just like turkey, I gotta ask why we only eat these once a year. When the season comes, (and it’s here right NOW, gang), grab a half dozen more bags than the one you need and freeze them.
OK, now that you have some, what are y’all gonna make? If it’s just cranberry sauce you crave, bypass that lame recipe on the back of the bag and try my version; folks at our house go nuts for this, and so will yours.
Now, how about a couple things a bit more outside the ‘same old’ box? Here’s a couple of great recipes that explore the savory side of cranberries.
Chutney is a spicy condiment that hails from a bunch of southeast Asian and Indian cuisines. Typical chutney blends the flavors of fruits and vegetables with vinegar, spices, and sugar. It’s a wonderful spin from the ordinary, so give it a try.
Cranberry Chutney
1 bag Cranberries
1 small sweet Onion
1 Apple
1 clove Garlic
1/2 Cup Red Wine
1/4 Cup Agave Nectar or Honey
2 Tablespoons Balsamic Vinegar
1 Tablespoon Oil
1/2 teaspoon ground Black Tellicherry Pepper
1/4 teaspoon Sea Salt
In a stainless steel saucepan over medium flame, heat the oil.
Dice the onion. Peel, core and dice the apple. Peel and mince the garlic.
Toss the onion, apple, and garlic into the oil and sauté until the onion starts to go translucent, about 5 minutes.
Add the wine, balsamic vinegar, agave, salt and pepper; incorporate thoroughly and heat through.
Raise heat to medium high and add the cranberries to the mix, stir to incorporate.
Allow to blend to cook on a low boil, stirring more or less constantly. Continue cooking until most of the cranberries have popped and the sauce is nice and thick, about 10 minutes.
Remove from heat and transfer to a glass bowl. Allow to cool thoroughly in the fridge. Chutney will keep in an air tight glass container for a week or so in the fridge, and for a month or two frozen.
Now here’s a favorite secret weapon that I’ll call Cranberry BBQ Sauce; trust me when I tell you that this absolutely rocks on game, beef, chicken, turkey, and pork, too. It’s also amazing on potatoes, or in stews or stroganoff.
Eben’s Cranberry BBQ Sauce
1 bag Cranberries
1 Cup sweet Onion
1 bottle Porter
1 large Navel Orange
1/2 Cup dry Red Wine
1/2 Cup Balsamic Vinegar
1/2 Cup Dark Brown Sugar
1/3 Cup Worcestershire Sauce
1/3 Cup Soy Sauce
2 cloves Garlic
Peel and dice onion, peel and mince garlic. Zest and juice the orange.
Use a nice, fresh local Porter, like this beauty from Deschutes Brewing.
Throw everybody into a large stainless steel sauce pan over medium high heat and blend well, dissolving sugar thoroughly.
As soon as the cranberries start to pop, reduce heat to achieve a nice, steady simmer. Allow to simmer for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.
Process sauce with an immersion blender, or carefully transfer to a blender, if that’s what you’ve got. Be very careful if you use a blender; process in batches and watch out for the hot sauce. Process until the sauce is uniform and smooth. If you don’t have an immersion blender, AKA. A motor boat, go buy yourself one for Christmas, they’re indispensable.
If you like your sauce a bit chunkier, as we do, you’re done; if you like it smoother, run the sauce through a steel sieve once.
Transfer to a glass bowl or jar and refrigerate for at least 4 hours prior to use, to allow the flavors to marry and the sauce to finish thickening.
Sauce will do fine in the fridge for a couple of weeks, if it lasts that long…
Juniper!
It’s so much more than a flavoring for gin! The variety that Juniper berries are harvested from is indeed a relative of the ornamental kinds we see out and about, but not all juniper berries are edible, so go with known sources rather than picking from the front shrubs. As some forestry buff is likely to point out, Junipers are actually a coniferous evergreen, and as such, the berries technically aren’t berries, they’re cones; now look who’s picking nits…
Juniper berries can be a bit hard to find, but World Spice, Penzey’s, or Pendrey’s will come to your rescue with a fresh supply; it’s well worth adding to your spice cabinet and here’s why.
You’ll use Juniper sparingly, so an ounce or two is plenty for your pantry. It’s a strong flavor, similar in seasoning power to Rosemary, but with a fruitier, somewhat resinous overtone to it, (again, they’re cones, so that makes sense, right?)
Juniper makes a stellar addition to base spices for stock, equally good for my mind in beef, chicken, pork or veggie. Two or three whole berries are plenty, added to your usual cohorts.
You can toast or roast the berries to bring out more complexity in the flavor profile.
If you’re using them as part of a rub or marinade and want to release a stronger juniper flavor, gently crush the berries under the flat of a chefs knife as you would garlic cloves, or do them up in a dedicated spice grinder.
For dang near any kind of game, Juniper is a secret weapon for taking the funky (AKA ‘gamey’, ‘strong’, etc) notes out of the taste profile. Try this wonderful rub as a marinade on any game you like.
3 cloves fresh Garlic
1-2 Tablespoons Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 teaspoon black Pepper
3 juniper berries, crushed
2 sprigs Rosemary, about 3″ long
Juice and zest of 1/2 fresh Lemon
Peel and finely mince the garlic.
Zest the lemon, bright color skin only of course.
Strip the leaves from the Rosemary sprigs and chop them finely.
Put juniper and pepper in a spice grander and process them until fine ground.
Put all of the above into a non reactive bowl, add the garlic, lemon juice and 1 tablespoon olive oil. mix thoroughly to a paste like consistency, add more oil if needed.
Spread evenly on all surfaces of your meat. Allow to marinate, refrigerated, for at least 4 hours and up to overnight.
This is also a great marinade for poultry or pork. If you like the flavor profile, try adding a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar and a cup of grapefruit or orange juice for a wonderful wet marinade.
Duck Fat!
Duck Fat! Duck fat? Really?!
Yeah, really. Now, I know what a lot of folks are thinking, so let’s get to the root first and foremost. “Duck fat (Or butter, or Lard, etc), isn’t good for you at all.” You’ve all heard this, right? The answer is more than a post unto itself, more like a book; thankfully, somebody already wrote it: Go find Gary Taubes’ ‘Good Calories, Bad Calories’ and read it. Check that out if you doubt me. Fact is, the whole saturated fat thing is likely the most pervasive nutritional myth there is. My summary is as follows – our fore bearers, and a lot of the world right now, still eat natural fats regularly and they ain’t dying in droves. As Kid Rock said, “All things in moderation, including moderation.”
So, back to duck fat – if you hunt ‘me, you got it, just like you got lard if you eat bacon. Don’t ignore either one, use them, enjoy them, revel in all that is real natural fat! There is literally nothing else out there that will impart such a gorgeous golden color and sumptuous taste.
Consider this;
Use duck fat like any other cooking fat; sauté anything and you’ll get the idea right away.
Potatoes fried in it are unbelievable; once you’ve tried it, you’ll know why…
Sub a couple tablespoons of duck fat for your regularly chosen one in a pie crust, especially for savory things like quiche.
Next time you roast a chicken, rub the skin with duck fat instead of butter; you can thank me later…
Duck fat will keep for a long, long time in the refrigerator, but you can also freeze it.
If you don’t hunt ducks and want in on this, just google duck fat; you’ll find plenty of sources to buy it, some probably right in your own town or nearby. It’ll keep just fine in the fridge, and it freezes well to boot. It’s another great candidate to freeze in a nice cube tray; just pop one out when you need that special touch and viola, you’re good to go!
Vas-y!
FIFO
Here’s another helpful little tip for y’all from the pro food world. It’s called FIFO and in any restaurant of quality, it’s practiced throughout each and every day.
It stand for
First
In
First
Out
Get it? It’s how you organize your stuff so that things don’t go to waste. Now, you’re probably thinking, ‘OK, but I’m not a restaurant, so why would I need this?’ That’s a rhetorical question though, right? Lemme answer it with a few questions of my own.
Do you throw out what could and should be good leftovers out ’cause they didn’t get used in time?
A couple/few times a year, do you go through your fridge and freezer and cabinets and shelves and chuck a bunch of stuff that didn’t get used in time?
Do you have a bunch of sauces, spices, herbs and whatnot that are way past their prime, maybe even downright off?
Can you afford all that waste?
If you answered too yup, yeah, yes, and no, then it’s FIFO time in your house. A little discipline will go a long way toward correcting those problems.
In restaurants, every time we prep, open, use or otherwise handle food, we slap a label on them that says what it is, when we opened or made it, and how long it’s good for. If you have a food waste problem, here’s a big part of the solution. This simple manifestation of FIFO at home is so often not done, it’s scary; how often have you looked at a leftover and asked ‘When did we make that; is it three days or seven?’ Sound familiar?
The easy fix is to label it every time and it’s problem solved. Use a non-permanent marker on storage containers in the fridge. Use a permanent marker in the freezer and in your shelves. Get some little stick on labels for anything else. Do it with spices, herbs, and stuff from your dry storage that tend so last a long time.
The next manifestation is to physically FIFO your fridge, freezer and cabinets; oldest stuff goes to the top or the front and gets used first, before it goes bad and before anything newer is opened or bought. You spend a bunch of money, time and effort on food and cooking; spend a little more an incorporate FIFO practices in to your menu planning. If you don’t menu plan, start. There’s simple, easy, smart food management. Get your family involved so the effort isn’t wasted.
Do you buy stuff in bulk like we do? Do you sometimes cook a bunch more of something than you need for than next meal, to save time and energy? Does it always get used in time when you do that? If not, think about it and start FIFOing your leftovers. If you did a bunch of chicken and it needs to be used in three days or so, stack that container front and center where it can’t be missed. If you don’t want to eat chicken for three days straight, portion and freeze what won’t get used right away. Food and money not wasted = good practice.
Again, we do this in the cafe every day without fail; it’s how we keep you well fed and safe. Do the same at home and you’ll save money and eat better.
Vas-y!
Sour cream by any other name…
OK, sooooo, got an email from follower Mari;
“I like your blog, but I have sort of a complaint; you always write about using crème fraîche or crèma instead of sour cream. Ours is a pretty small town, and we just don’t have that kind of stuff available. Does it make that much of a difference?”
Yes, Mari, there is a Santa Claus. Oops, wrong email, hang on. Ahem…. Great question, and actually, a major My Bad for not sharing on some post or another.
The short answer is yeah, it does make a difference. That said, there’s a real easy solution I failed to mention; make your own.
All three are fairly close cousins. Crèma and crème fraîche are closer to each other than either is to sour cream.
American sour cream is the thickest of the three, and the most acidic, but contains far less butterfat than its cousins. It’ll have 18% to 22% butter fat and not less than .5% acidity, per USDA specs. Genuine crèma and crème fraîche are more like 30% to 45% butter fat, notably less acidic, and thinner than sour cream, though many folks would call crèma thinner and crème fraîche lighter or fluffier.
Making very decent crèma and crème fraîche at home is simple; all you need is cream, buttermilk, and sour cream to make it happen. Obviously, the fresher your ingredients, the better your final product. Avoid ultra pasteurized anything, if at all possible. Here’s how it works.
Crèma:
There are notable factions for sweeter Crèma and not so much Crèma, so here are recipes for both.
Crèma I
1 cup Heavy Cream
1/4 Cup Sour Cream
1 teaspoon powdered Sugar
Combine all in an airtight glass container and allow to rest at room temperature until the mixture has thickened to the consistency you like, (About 10-12 hours), stir gently once about half way through.
Store refrigerated in an airtight glass container for up to a week.
Now we’ll do the buttermilk powered version, which also happens to be the same gig for Crème Fraîche; the only diff will be the length of time you allow for thickening – A bit longer for Crème Fraîche than for Crèma. For my mind, the active culture from buttermilk and the slower culturing process produces a smoother, more complex crèma with an authentic nutty flavor.
Crèma II & Crème Fraîche
1 cup Heavy Cream
2 teaspoons Buttermilk
In a sauce pan over low flame, heat the cream just to take the refrigerated chill off; use a thermometer and don’t let the temp rise above 100° F.
Pull the cream off the heat and pour it into a clean glass jar with a tight fitting lid.
Gently stir in the buttermilk.
Put the lid on the jar but don’t tighten it down.
Place the jar in a nice, quiet warm spot in your kitchen and let it develop for 10 to 24 hours; Crèma will be ready to go in 10 to 12 hours, and Crème Fraîche in 18 to 24. Let it work until it has notably thickened. Keep in mind that you want You want Crèma thinner than either sour cream or crème fraîche; the beauty of crèma is the way it drizzles over killer Mexican food juuuust right.
Once you’re to the proper thickness, stir gently but thoroughly.
Refrigerate for at least 4 hours prior to using, to allow the thickening process to complete.
Either version will last about a week in the fridge.
When can use it straight, or try adding a little something to it if you like: Dried chile, ground annatto seed, lime, lemon, orange juice, or smoked paprika all go really nicely.
Salute!
UrbanMonique 