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Cranberries Are Tartly Satisfying

© Lindsay W. McSweeney

Cranberries, which along the blueberry and the Concord grape are the only fruits native to the U.S. and Canada, can be a puzzle to the cook. Unlike most fruits, their tart flavor precludes them from being eaten without treatment. The original cranberry cooks, the Indians, knew to deal with the tartness by adding maple syrup. Adding sugar in one form or another is still the way to make cranberries appealing.

Our ancestors must have sensed how healthy cranberries are - the first commercial cranberry planting was in 1816. Cranberries are packed with Vitamin C and cranberry juice is always suggested for urinary tract infections. But somehow cranberries became defined as a holiday food, and only intense, recent marketing has made them a year round fruit. They are certainly worth getting to know.

You can buy cranberries in three forms, (besides juiced). Canned cranberry sauce, whether as whole berries or jellied, used to be the only form in which cranberries could be bought, and their purchase was often limited to Thanksgiving and/or Christmas. Fresh cranberries have been available during the last several years. They are packaged whole and are available after harvest, which occurs between Labor Day and Halloween. How do you tell a ripe cranberry? Cranberries never get sweet or soft and their color can vary from light red to deep scarlet. The answer is to throw a cranberry on a hard floor. If it bounces, it's ripe. And, most recently, the use of dried cranberries has exploded. All told, some 558 million pounds of cranberries were sold in 2001.

Canned cranberries, while good, do not lend themselves to the variety of options that the fresh and dried forms do. In fact, with a food processor, it is so fast and easy to make a good fresh cranberry relish, that purchasing canned cranberries should not be necessary. Simply empty a 12-ounce bag of fresh cranberries into a food processor. Cut up a naval orange into sections- leaving the peel on - and add to the cranberries. Add sugar, starting with ½ cup, and process. Taste and add more sugar as necessary.

Once made, the relish will happily sit in the refrigerator for several months since cranberries contain a natural preservative called benzoic acid. Then, as you use portions of the basic relish, add additional flavors to coordinate with the main course. If you're serving the relish with duck, add Grand Marnier or any orange flavored liqueur. If you're serving the relish with chicken, add crystallized ginger pieces. For pork, add a red wine or port. To make cranberry syrup, add light corn syrup and warm. For a great winter dessert, see below where I've used homemade cranberry relish to make an upside down cake that comes made with a beautiful (and healthy) topping.

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