Cranberry-Orange Relish
When I was a kid, I thought cranberries were sweet — after all, cranberry juice sure was! But then I finally tasted an honest-to-goodness whole cranberry and realized that good ol’ Ocean Spray had added a fair amount of sweeteners to make the juice palatable for the American tongue. Now that I’ve veered off the Sweet Track and onto the Street of Deeper Flavors (my current chocolate preference is 90% cocoa, and I finally made the switch from Riesling to Rioja), I rather enjoy the extreme tartness that a cranberry offers.
When making a dessert relish/sauce (or a raw breakfast compote), though, unadulterated cranberries are even a bit much for me, which is why I thought I’d recreate the wintertime Cranberry-Orange Relish classic in a way that would still be a little bit sweet but that wouldn’t require cup after cup of refined white sugar.
The solution? Simple: just use honey instead. And seeing as orange juice is pretty sweet on its own (so are cocktail grapefruits), you can also squeeze an extra orange and add more fresh juice to counterbalance the acidity of the cranberries.
Here’s a quick formula to get you started: 1 cup whole cranberries (frozen or fresh) + juice of 1 juice orange (or cocktail grapefruit) + 2 T. honey. Just place all in a blender and whirr until you have the desired consistency. (You can also add a teaspoon of spice — cinnamon is a good choice, or you can blend it with nutmeg, ginger, cloves, or allspice so that you wind up with a total of 1 teaspoon.) Taste to see if the tartness is to your liking and add more honey if it’s still too sour. Blend and repeat until your tongue is happily tingling. Bear in mind that you might want to taste the relish when it’s still rather coarsely-ground in case you do have to keep repeating the blending step (which will make the berries smaller and smaller each time); also, bear in mind that the relish will sweeten slightly upon standing and that you can always stir in more honey right before serving.
Enjoy!
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Tags: cranberry relish, honey, orange juice, spices, winter dessert
