Relishing the Relish

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Just in time for the holiday season, I present one of my favourite holiday foods -- cranberry relish!  I know cranberry relish doesn't typically hit the top ten ten list of holiday treats, but it's a big deal at my house, and I try to keep a bowl of it around from mid-November through the end of December.

I have fond memories of Thanksgiving in my youth.  It was always a big family affair with many relatives and often friends, too.  My grandmother made the most delicious, melt-in-your-mouth rolls and my grandfather made cranberry relish (they also made fabulous stuffing).  I started making cranberry relish on my own when I moved far from family after grad school and needed some traditions to help me feel connected and grounded.  I didn't have a recipe, so I recreated it from childhood memory.  It has been a personal favourite ever since, giving me an easy, quick, healthy food tradition that adds brilliant colour to the dinner table and reminds me of happy childhood holidays.


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Ingredients:
1 bag cranberries
1 apple (sweet)
1 orange
1 c. frozen raspberries
3/8 c. sugar (more or less to taste)

Instructions:
Total time: ~30 minutes
Clean the fruits -- rinse, wash, etcetera.  Pour 4/5 of the cranberries into a food processor and chop into pieces; dump into a large bowl.  Core and chunk the apple; put the pieces in the food processor and chop.  Save out 1/5 and pour the rest in with the cranberries.  Do the same with the orange (rind and all, though you can remove the white strings).  Add most of the raspberries in with the raw fruit.  Mix in approximately 1/4 c. sugar, stir, and let sit.

Put about 1/2 inch of water in a small pot, add the saved-out fruit and 1/8 c. sugar.  Heat over medium until the fruit comes to a boil and the cranberries start popping.  Turn the heat down and allow to simmer until it turns into a lovely, red, sweet sauce, slightly thickened.

Pour the sauce over the raw fruit and stir well.  Eat immediately or let sit.  It ages very well.

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Easy-to-Peel Hardboiled Eggs

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In the spring and summer, we get eggs.  Lots and lots of eggs.  I am always looking for new ways to fix eggs -- scrambled, fried, poached, in breads, in desserts, in stir-fries, in souffles, in bulls-eyes.  Egg salad is a popular option at our house, but hard-boiling and then peeling the eggs always seems like a lot of work -- especially since fresh eggs tend to be more difficult to peel.

My solution?  Steamed eggs.  They are tender, look and taste fresh, and are a dream to peel.

Here's the deal:
Bring a pot of water to steaming.  Add a single layer of eggs in a steamer.  Cover the pot and steam for ~13 minutes.  In the meantime, prepare a bowl of ice water.  When the eggs are done steaming, let them cool in the ice water and then start peeling.

Don't throw out those shells!  You can compost them, feed them back to the chickens to keep their calcium levels up, or put them around your tomatoes.

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Preserve a Little Summer : Peach Butter

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Two words: Peach Butter
Peaches + Sugar + Lemon = Summer in a jar = sweet warm sunshine for the middle of winter

Our peach tree did absolutely nothing this year, and by nothing I mean it didn't even blossom.  Heartbreaking -- I was very much looking forward to my first great crop of peaches.  However, peaches in other parts of the country must be doing well, because our local market had boxes and boxes of peaches at very lovely price.  So I got some.

And I set off to make peach butter.  A quick blanch of the peaches in boiling water helps the peels come off, and I peeled, pitted, and chopped about 4+ pounds (I don't have a kitchen scale, so weight measurements are tricky), and set them in a pot to cook down to softness.  I also added the zest and juice of a lemon to both balance the flavour and add acid for canning.

When the peaches were soft, I spooned them into the blender to break down even further, to a smooth, spreadable consistency.  Four blenderfuls later, I had about 7.5 cups of peach puree, to which I added sugar (about 3.5 cups), and put it back on the stove to cook down and thicken up.

Delicious.

The jars had been preparing, so I spooned peach/lemon/sugar mixture into hot jars and put them in the hot water canner to process for about 15 minutes.

When they were done, I had five beautiful half pints and 4 quarter pints ("jelly-sized) of peach butter -- perfect for reminding me in January and February that summer is not a figment of my imagination -- and great for gifts, too!

 

You can find great peach butter recipes in these two books -- one for regular peach butter (like you see here) and one for roasted peach butter, which is also delicious, but takes more peaches (I made some of that, too).

Recipe
Ingredients
Peaches: peeled, pitted, chopped
Lemon: juice & zest (one lemon for 7-8 cups of puree)
Sugar: about 1/2 cup for each cup of pureed peach

Directions
Cook the chopped peaches (add a little water to the bottom of the pot) until they are soft and smashable.  Spoon peaches into blender or food processor in small batches.  Puree/blend until smooth and spreadable but not liquid.  Pour peaches into clean pot and add in lemon and sugar; stir in until sugar is dissolved.  Heat mixture at medium heat until it reaches a jam-like density*.
Meanwhile, prepare your jars.  Clean and heat lids, rings, and jars -- sizes and amount vary by amount of peach butter.
When the peach butter has reached the right consistency, pour into jars.  Wipe off the mouths of the jars and top with lids and rings.  Process in hot water canner for 15 minutes for half-pint jars.

If you have a little extra that doesn't fit in a jar, there's no harm in just sticking it in the fridge to eat in the summer!

*To test for jam and fruit butter readiness, drop a small, small spoonful onto a chilled plate.  If it spreads and/or separates, it's not ready yet.  If it holds its shape like a blob of jam, it's good to go.

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Homegrown Cornbread

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It's a wonderful feeling to make something to eat with ingredients you grew or made yourself.  This week I made a delicious blender cornbread with corn* we grew in last year's garden, eggs laid by our own hens, kefir we made from local raw milk, and wheat-free flour we ground.  The sweetener was even local maple syrup.  The result -- a light delicious cornbread that was truly homemade!


Recipe: Blender Cornbread 

2/3 cup kefir
1/3 cup almond milk (or soy or regular milk)
2/3 cup dry corn
1/3 cup oats
1/3 cup quinoa (sometimes I split this with brown rice)
3 Tbs maple syrup (more isn't bad, either)
1/4 cup melted coconut oil (or butter or butter substitute)
2 eggs
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.  Grease an 8x8 glass baking pan.
Grind the corn and grains in the blender.  Add kefir, syrup, and oil and blend until smooth.
Blend in eggs for 2-3 minutes on high speed.  Add baking powder, salt, and soda and mix just enough to blend in.
Pour batter into baking pan and bake for 25-35 minutes (be sure to use a tester).


*Last year's corn was Cherokee White Eagle from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.

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