Tag: cranberries

A Lost Recipe—Apple Cranberry Crisp

I’m not sure, but my guess is that professional chefs never lose recipes, which is one reason I know that I will never be or even aspire to be a professional cook. I confess to losing, or at least misplacing, at least one recipe a year. For instance, there was the great Hot Fudge Sauce Hot Fudge Sauce recipe that I made a couple of times, then lost for years until finding it by chance. And then there is Pat’s Caponata recipe that I never found but had to recreate by tweaking some recipes I found on line.

Jerri suffers from the same weakness. Forty or forty-five years ago when we were still living in Kentucky, Jerri made a dessert that we loved. It was a crisp made with apples, cranberries and oatmeal. She made it three or four times in Kentucky, and we think that she made it at least once or twice after we moved to New Richmond. We are not sure of that, so it is possible that she lost the recipe during the move.

Every year when we buy cranberries at the marsh near Stone Lake, Wisconsin, she laments that she has lost that recipe. This fall I suggested that we try to recreate it. I went on line and saved six recipes that resembled the one she remembered. She chose the one that seemed closest to what she remembered and dictated some changes to me.

She then followed her newly revised recipe which produced a wonderful dessert. You really need to try it. It will wow your family and guests. Offer it as a second dessert on Thanksgiving day or just serve it warm with a scoop of ice cream after any meal. It’s even good plain and cold for a healthful breakfast! Think of it as oatmeal and fruit.

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups cranberries, fresh or frozen
3 1/2 cups diced peeled apples
1 cup sugar
3 T all-purpose flour
Dash of salt
1 1/2 cups old fashioned oatmeal
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup chopped pecans

PROCEDURE:

Grease an eight by twelve-inch baking dish and set a stick of butter aside to soften to room temperature.

Peel and core the apples and chop them into a half-inch dice. Blend the flour, salt and sugar in a mixing bowl. Stir the apples and cranberries into the sugar mixture. Make sure that the fruit is mixed evenly through the batter.

Preheat the oven to 350º and make the topping. Blend the oatmeal, flour, cinnamon and brown sugar together in a mixing bowl. Add the butter in small pieces, and cut the butter into the dry ingredients. Stir in the chopped pecans. You should have a crumbly topping mixture.

Pour the fruit batter into the greased baking dish. Sprinkle the topping evenly over the fruit. Bake at 350° for fifty to fifty-five minutes or until the apples are tender and most of the cranberries have popped open.

Serve warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. You will have eight to ten servings.

Linda’s Cranberry Salsa

Fruit salsas are examples of fusion cuisine, which combine recipes or ingredients from two different cultures. Rick Bayless, the Oklahoma kid who abandoned barbecue and took up with tacos, says that fruit salsas apparently originated in the United States but have been infiltrating Mexican cuisine. He should know, since he and his wife Deann spent over six years researching Mexican cooking before publishing Authentic Mexican: Regional Cooking from the Heart of Mexico in 1987.

Linda’s Cranberry Salsa is a good example. It combines traditional ingredients of Mexican salsas—jalapeño peppers, cilantro, and onions—with fresh Wisconsin cranberries. I got the recipe from my sister Patsy in an email which began with a question: “Did I ever give you a recipe for cranberry salsa?”

She had not, but I am always interested in new family recipes. Patsy explained that she got the recipe from Linda, a friend who worked with her at the hospital in Hayward. Linda turned out to be a classmate of mine who shared some of my interests and was on the staff of the school newspaper and competed in forensics.

When I asked Linda how she learned to make this salsa, she told me that she wasn’t sure, but that she thought a friend of hers who lives in Green Bay gave it to her many years ago. Linda liked the salsa and told Patsy about how good it was, prompting my sister to ask for the recipe. Linda obliged, proving once again that we all benefit from an ancient tradition that is still a friendly custom.

To be painfully honest, I had my doubts about this recipe when Patsy sent it to me. Cranberries and jalapeños with cilantro and cumin? No way! But when she told me that she makes a batch every fall when fresh cranberries become available, I decided to try it. She’s a good cook. I now have to agree with her conclusion: “The salsa is sweet, but oddly enough the bite from the jalapenos and the salt from the chips (I use mulitgrain Scoops) made it taste good.”

When I offered a sample to our neighbor Jill, she hesitated before saying she would try some. Later she confessed to the same doubts I harbored, but she now wants to make more herself and has asked for the recipe.

Cranberries are plentiful now, and you can find jalapeño peppers and cilantro at your local supermarket. Now’s the time to treat your football fans to a batch of Linda’s cranberry salsa.

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup water
1 cup sugar
4 cups cranberries
2-3 jalapeño peppers
1 T cilantro
2-3 green onions
1/2 tsp. cumin
Dash of salt
1 T fresh lime juice (half an average lime)

PROCEDURE:

Wash the cranberries and jalapeño peppers. Coarsely chop the cranberries.

Combine the water and sugar in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring until all the sugar has dissolved. Raise the heat and bring the mixture to a boil Reduce the heat and boil slowly for ten minutes without stirring to make a thin syrup.

Prepare the vegetables while the syrup is cooking. Cut the stems from the peppers, slice them into quarters and remove the seeds and white membranes. Then slice each quarter in half and chop the peppers into a quarter-inch dice. Clean and cut the onions into eighth-inch slices, discarding the root ends. Wash and chop the cilantro medium fine.

After the syrup has cooked for ten minutes, pour it into a mixing bowl and allow it to cool slightly, four or five minutes. Wash a lime and juice half of it.

Add the cranberries, peppers, cilantro, onions, cumin, salt and lime juice to the syrup and mix lightly. Taste and adjust the flavors as you wish. You may want to add a little more cilantro, cumin or lime juice.

Refrigerate the salsa for at least an hour. Serve at room temperature with tortilla chips or dippers.

NOTES: The flavor improves if you allow the salsa to rest for several hours or overnight so the flavors can blend. When you adjust the seasoning, be careful not to add too much salt. Keep in mind that tortilla chips usually are quite salty.

My brother-in-law Patrick grew up around a lot of Scandinavians and acquired their preference for less spicy foods. He likes a mild version of this salsa with only one jalapeño. As Pat says, “You can make it exactly the way you like it.”

If you don’t have a food processor (like us) or a food chopper, you can just cut the cranberries into fourths.