Cranberry Sauce & Relish Recipes

Thanksgiving always means cranberry sauce to me. I’ve been making my own cranberry sauce for years and today I’m featuring some of my all time favorites that have appeared previously on My Carolina Kitchen, each with its own special twist and worthy of another showing. Each year I normally try a new cranberry sauce, but vertigo continues to give me problems so for now I’ll be sticking with these sure-to-please favorites.  

The first is our traditional cranberry sauce flavored with red wine with a citrus undertone. I call it “French” cranberry sauce because of the red wine, even though the French don’t have a cranberry sauce that I know of. No matter how many new ones I try, this one will always be my favorite.

My Carolina Kitchen’s French Cranberry Sauce
A citrus twist on a classic – serves 12
Printable Recipe

1 (12 ounce) package of fresh or frozen cranberries
2 cinnamon sticks
1 cup dry red wine, preferably French
¾ cup to 1 ½ cups sugar, or to taste (I used 1 cup)
2 oranges, navel or tangerines

Put the cranberries (no need to thaw if they’re frozen) in a sauce pan with the one of the cinnamon sticks, red wine, and sugar. Zest the oranges and set aside half of the zest for a garnish. Add the remaining zest and the juice of both oranges to the cranberry mixture. Stir the cranberry mixture and bring to a boil.  Partially cover the saucepan and simmer about 15 minutes, until the cranberries have burst. Remove from the heat, let cool, and discard the cinnamon stick. The sauce will firm up as it cools. It can be refrigerated, covered, for up to five days. At the last minute, using a microplane rasp style grater, grate a little cinnamon “dust” over the cranberry sauce and garnish with the remaining citrus zest. Serve at room temperature.

This cranberry sauce is a mixture of fresh cranberries and dried tart cherries, flavored with crème de cassis, a popular French black current-flavored liqueur commonly used in a Kir or a Kir Royale. The cherry flavor really comes through in this cranberry sauce and offers a new and exciting taste to the traditional.

Cranberry Sauce with Cassis and Dried Cherries
Cooking Light – serves 12
Printable Recipe

1 tablespoon canola oil
½ cup finely chopped shallots
2/3 cup dried tart cherries
½ cup crème de cassis (black currant-flavored liqueur)
¾ cup sugar
1 (12 ounce) package fresh cranberries
1 ½ teaspoons grated fresh lemon rind

Heat a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add oil, swirl to coat the pan. Add shallots and sauté for 4 minutes or until tender, stirring occasionally and taking care not to let them brown or burn. Add cherries, crème de cassis, sugar, and cranberries and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 8 minutes or until cranberries began to pop, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat and stir in the lemon rind. Cool to room temperature.

The next recipe is a relish and would be good with smoked turkey. It’s from a very old Cooking Light recipe and is fairly low in sugar compared to most cranberry sauces. It cooks for a relatively short period of time compared to most cranberry sauces.

Sweet & Sour Cranberry Relish
Adapted from an old Cooking Light recipe – serves 6
Printable Recipe

½ cup chopped onion
1 teaspoon minced garlic
2 cups fresh cranberries
6 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons water
2 teaspoons good cider vinegar

Coat a saucepan with cooking spray. Place over medium high heat until hot. Add the onions and garlic and sauté until tender. Add cranberries, sugar and water and bring to a boil. Cook 3 to 5 minutes or until mixture is thickened. Stir in the vinegar. It can be refrigerated, covered, for up to 3 days. Serve at room temperature.

This is a citrusy one flavored with dried figs and crunchy nuts. It is another relish and I really enjoyed the crunch of the nuts. My mother used to make a molded cranberry jelly with pecans and the nuts in this one brought back fond memories for me of my childhood. I can still see the pecan tree in the back yard and remember well what a chore it was to crack the pecans and separate the nuts from the shells.

Cranberry Fig Relish
Cooking Light – serves 12
Printable Recipe

1 cup fresh orange juice (about 4 oranges)
¾ cup chopped dried figs
½ cup dry red wine
½ cup granulated sugar
¼ cup packed brown sugar
1 (12 ounce) package fresh cranberries
1/3 cup chopped roasted fresh pecans or walnuts

Combine the orange juice, figs, and red wine in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat, and simmer 10 minutes. Add both sugars and the cranberries. Cook over medium heat for 10 minutes or until mixture is slightly thick and berries pop, stirring occasionally. Cool slightly. Stir in pecans. Cover and chill. If you make this a few days ahead, leave out the nuts until just before serving so they remain crunchy.

The last one is fresh cranberry relish and it’s important that you use fresh cranberries, not frozen ones, because the cranberries are not cooked in this recipe. The ingredients may sound a bit strange, but the fresh flavors of the cranberries and oranges are very refreshing. The relish just bursts in your mouth and the crunch of the nuts gives it a nice dimension. The first bite reminded me of fresh oranges flavored with cranberries and it looks like colorful sunrise on the plate.

Fresh Cranberry Relish
Adapted from Red Book magazine – makes 2 cups
Printable Recipe

1 (12-ounce) bag fresh cranberries (do not use frozen cranberries)
1 small navel orange (unpeeled), quartered or if large, cut into 1/8’s
¼ cup good orange marmalade
¼ cup sugar
¼ cup golden raisins, chopped
2 tablespoons prepared horseradish
½ cup chopped walnuts or pecans, toasted, plus a little for garnish
A half slice of fresh orange for garnish

In a food processor, roughly chop cranberries, oranges, sugar, raisins and horseradish to combine. (Check to make sure the oranges are fully incorporated before continuing.) Remove relish from processor and stir in the nuts. Cover and refrigerate until well chilled, about 2 hours. Relish can be made 2 days ahead and stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator. Bring to room temperature before serving and garnish with a chopped nuts and fresh orange slice.

For better viewing, click on photos to enlarge.  

This will be shared with Foodie Friday at Rattlebridge Farm, Miz Helen’s Country Kitchen Full Plate Thursday, and Weekend Bites at Simple Recipes.

Have a nice weekend everyone.

A Plethora of Cranberry Sauces & Relishes

There is never a Thanksgiving at our house without cranberry sauce and this year will be no exception. I’ve been making my own cranberry sauce for years and each year I try a couple of new ones.

The first new one is fresh cranberry relish and it’s important that you use fresh cranberries, not frozen ones, because the cranberries are not cooked in this recipe. The ingredients may sound a bit strange, but the fresh flavors of the cranberries and oranges are very refreshing. The relish just bursts in your mouth and the crunch of the nuts gives it a nice dimension. The first bite reminded me of fresh oranges flavored with cranberries and it looks like colorful sunrise on the plate. I have to admit this one stole my heart.

Fresh Cranberry Relish
Adapted from Red Book magazine – makes 2 cups
Printable Recipe

1 (12-ounce) bag fresh cranberries (do not use frozen cranberries)
1 small navel orange (unpeeled), quartered or if large, cut into 1/8’s
¼ cup good orange marmalade
¼ cup sugar
¼ cup golden raisins, chopped
2 tablespoons prepared horseradish
½ cup chopped walnuts or pecans, toasted, plus a little for garnish
A half slice of fresh orange for garnish

In a food processor, roughly chop cranberries, oranges, sugar, raisins and horseradish to combine. (Check to make sure the oranges are fully incorporated before continuing.) Remove relish from processor and stir in the nuts. Cover and refrigerate until well chilled, about 2 hours. Relish can be made 2 days ahead and stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator. Bring to room temperature before serving and garnish with a chopped nuts and fresh orange slice.

The next new recipe is also a relish and would be good with smoked turkey. It’s from a very old Cooking Light recipe and is fairly low in sugar compared to most cranberry sauces. It cooks for a relatively short period of time compared to most.

Sweet & Sour Cranberry Relish
Adapted from an old Cooking Light recipe – serves 6
Printable Recipe

½ cup chopped onion
1 teaspoon minced garlic
2 cups fresh cranberries
6 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons water
2 teaspoons good cider vinegar

Coat a saucepan with cooking spray. Place over medium high heat until hot. Add the onions and garlic and sauté until tender. Add cranberries, sugar and water and bring to a boil. Cook 3 to 5 minutes or until mixture is thickened. Stir in the vinegar. It can be refrigerated, covered, for up to 3 days. Serve at room temperature.

The next three you may remember from last year. This is a citrusy one flavored with dried figs and crunchy nuts. It is another relish and I really enjoyed the crunch of the nuts. My mother used to make a molded cranberry jelly with pecans and the nuts in this one brought back fond memories for me of my childhood. I can still see the pecan tree in the back yard and remember well what a chore it was to crack the pecans and separate the nuts from the shells.

Cranberry Fig Relish
Cooking Light – serves 12
Printable Recipe

1 cup fresh orange juice (about 4 oranges)
¾ cup chopped dried figs
½ cup dry red wine
½ cup granulated sugar
¼ cup packed brown sugar
1 (12 ounce) package fresh cranberries
1/3 cup chopped roasted fresh pecans or walnuts

Combine the orange juice, figs, and red wine in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat, and simmer 10 minutes. Add both sugars and the cranberries. Cook over medium heat for 10 minutes or until mixture is slightly thick and berries pop, stirring occasionally. Cool slightly. Stir in nuts but leave a few for garnish. Cover and chill. If you make this a few days ahead, leave out the nuts until just before serving so they remain crunchy.

This cranberry sauce is a mixture of fresh cranberries and dried tart cherries, flavored with crème de cassis, a popular French black current-flavored liqueur commonly used in a Kir or a Kir Royale. The cherry flavor really comes through in this cranberry sauce and offers a new and exciting taste to the traditional.

Cranberry Sauce with Cassis and Dried Cherries
Cooking Light – serves 12
Printable Recipe

1 tablespoon canola oil
½ cup finely chopped shallots
2/3 cup dried tart cherries
½ cup crème de cassis (black currant-flavored liqueur)
¾ cup sugar
1 (12 ounce) package fresh cranberries
1 ½ teaspoons grated fresh lemon rind

Heat a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add oil, swirl to coat the pan. Add shallots and sauté for 4 minutes or until tender, stirring occasionally and taking care not to let them brown or burn. Add cherries, crème de cassis, sugar, and cranberries and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 8 minutes or until cranberries began to pop, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat and stir in the lemon rind, but save a little for a garnish. Cool to room temperature before serving.

Last, but certainly not least, is our traditional cranberry sauce is flavored with red wine with a citrus undertone and I’ve dubbed it “French” cranberry sauce because of the wine, even though the French don’t have a cranberry sauce that I know of. No matter how many new ones I try, this one will always be my favorite.

My Carolina Kitchen’s “French” Cranberry Sauce
A citrus twist on a classic – serves 12
Printable Recipe

1 (12 ounce) package of fresh or frozen cranberries
2 cinnamon sticks
1 cup dry red wine, preferably French
¾ cup to 1 ½ cups sugar, or to taste (I use 1 cup)
2 navel oranges

Put the cranberries (no need to thaw if they’re frozen) in a sauce pan with the one of the cinnamon sticks, red wine, and sugar. Zest the oranges and set aside half of the zest for a garnish. Add the remaining zest and the juice of both oranges to the cranberry mixture. Stir the cranberry mixture and bring to a boil.  Partially cover the saucepan and simmer about 15 minutes, until the cranberries have burst. Remove from the heat, let cool, and discard the cinnamon stick. The sauce will firm up as it cools. It can be refrigerated, covered, for up to five days. At the last minute, garnish with the remaining fresh citrus zest. Serve at room temperature.

This will be shared with Foodie Friday at Rattlebridge Farms, Miz Helen’s Country Kitchen Full Plate Thursday, Foodie Friday at Simple Recipes, and Seasonal Sunday at the Tablescaper.

For better viewing, click photos to enlarge.

Happy Thanksgiving to those who will be celebrating this Thursday and I hope everyone has a very nice weekend.

Rustic-style Herbed Bread Dressing with Sausage & Mushrooms

Most years I make a typical southern-style cornbread dressing similar to what was served in my home on Thanksgiving when I was a child, but I was in the mood for a change this year and wanted to try my hand at a bread based dressing. Slightly spicy sweet Italian sausage and rich earthy cremini mushrooms bring a lot of hearty flavors to this rustic-style herb bread dressing. Using artisan bread adds another dimension of freshness instead of using the dried packaged bread stuffing mix. And of course it’s not dressing without the traditional flavors of fresh thyme and sage herbs. An aromatic mirepoix of vegetables rounds out the dish. I did increase the amount of fresh thyme and sage by half again from the original recipe, so if you think that might be too herby for your family’s taste, cut them back to one tablespoon each.

I’ve used cremini mushrooms in this recipe. Often you’ll see them labeled baby portabellos or baby bellas. The differences between white button mushrooms, cremini and portabellos can be confusing and what it boils down to a matter of their age. The cultivated white button mushrooms are the youngest variety of button mushrooms. When the mushroom is left to grow for longer and become mature, they turn brown, their tops spread out and that is the portabello. The cremini mushroom is the one in between. It is a moderately mature version of the white button mushroom yet younger than the portabello, hence the name baby portabellos or baby bellas.

Cranberry sauce is one of my Thanksgiving specialties and I will be posting several versions early next week for those of you that love cranberry sauce, so stay tuned. Here’s a close-up of the herbed bread dressing. Dig in with your fork

Rustic-style Herbed Bread Dressing with Sausage & Mushrooms
Adapted from Wine, Food & Friends by Karen MacNeil, based on a Lightened-up Recipe Makeover from Cooking Light, yield 12 servings

1 ½ pounds peasant-style artisan white bread
4 (4 ounce) links sweet Italian turkey or chicken sausage in casings
2 teaspoons sweet butter
1 pound cremini or baby bella mushrooms, cleaned, tough stems trimmed off, then quartered
2 tablespoons sweet butter
1 ¼ cups chopped mild white or yellow onion
1 ¼ cups peeled & chopped carrots
1 ¼ cups chopped celery
½ cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 ½ tablespoons fresh thyme leaves
1 ½ tablespoons minced fresh sage
1 teaspoon kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Cooking spray
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 (14 ounce) can fat-free low-sodium chicken broth (or homemade if you have it)

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Cut bread into 1” cubes and arrange in a single layer on a half sheet pan and bake for 10 minutes. Toss half way through to insure evening browning. Remove from the oven and place in an extra large mixing bowl. Reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees F.

Cook sausage links in a large non-stick skillet over medium-high heat for about 10 minutes until they are cooked through, browning evenly on all sides. Remove from the skillet and set aside until they are cool enough to slice. After they are sliced, add to the bowl with the bread cubes.

In that same skillet, melt 2 teaspoons of butter over medium-high heat. Add mushrooms and sauté until they’ve given up their liquid, salting about half way though. Add them to the bowl along with the bread.

Carefully wipe out the skillet and add the 2 tablespoons of butter. Sauté the onions, carrots and celery over medium-high heat until they have softened, but not browned, about 5 minutes. Add the parsley, thyme, sage, salt and freshly ground black and sauté one minute to incorporate. Add the vegetables to the bowl with the bread, sausages and mushrooms.

Whisk together the eggs and chicken broth. Stir the liquid into the bread mixture to moisten and toss well to coat. Coat a 13 x 9-inch baking dish with cooking spray, then spread the bread mixture evenly in the dish. Bake at 350 degrees F for 45 minutes. Serve warm. Yield 12 servings.

Printable recipe

This will be shared with Foodie Friday at Rattlebridge Farm, Miz Helen’s Country Kitchen Full Plate Thursday, Foodie Friday at Simple Recipes, and Seasonal Sunday at the Tablescaper.  

Favorite Thanksgiving Recipes

French Cranberry Sauce 

It’s been a wild and crazy week. Between dashing to appointments with a very talented decorator at Pottery Barn (a fabulous experience by the way) and pulling the condo together for the season, I don’t feel like we’ve even stopped to catch our breath. What a shame too because the weather in south Florida in November is absolutely delightful. Not too cold, not too hot, and the traffic isn’t enough to make you want to pull your hair out just yet.

Last night I had a little panic attack when I realized next Thursday is Thanksgiving. As usual Meakin’s advice is right on. “Don’t worry,” he said, “just rely on our old standards, which is what most people prefer for Thanksgiving anyway.”

And so it is. We’ll have a traditional oven roasted turkey, a French cranberry sauce simmered in red wine that I’ve made for thirty years, a version of my mother’s Southern cornbread dressing, and baby English peas with butter and rosemary. Dessert will be Bahamian sweet potato pie spiked with a healthy dash of dark rum for an island twist. Simple enough and easy to pull off. Besides, our favorite Thanksgiving food is really a turkey sandwich shared between the two of us before we turn off the lights in the kitchen and go to bed Thursday evening.

On Friday I’ll make one of our favorite fall soups – pumpkin squash, which is what I did last year. It can be made ahead and slowly reheated after a Friday morning shopping spree if you’re so inclined to visit the malls. You most definitely won’t find us there. My first career was in retail management and just thinking about shopping on the day after Thanksgiving gives me a major headache. But for others, it’s exciting to snap up bargains and get your Christmas shopping out of the way early, so I say more power to you. The economy will definitely thank you.

Pumpkin Squash Soup

The details and the recipes can be found by clicking the various links. I’ll be sharing our Thanksgiving favorites with Foodie Friday at Designs by Gollum and On the Menu Monday at Stone Gable.

What are your plans for Thanksgiving? Are you, like us, serving old favorites or are you spreading your wings and trying some new recipes?  Will you be staying home and doing the cooking or are you going to visit family or friends? Whatever you do and wherever you go,  we wish you and your family a very happy Thanksgiving.