Just a quick post tonight and a great little recipe for your Christmas Dinner. First, I want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas!! I hope your holidays are full of family, friends, fun and lots of great food! I’m looking forward to our quite Christmas with me, my wife and daughter so we don’t have to deal with travelling. If you do have to travel I wish safe journeys and a quick stress free trip. It looks to be a relatively quite weekend weatherwise, at least here in the USA, so hopefully no one will have any difficult driving or flight delays.

I my last post I promised a Cranberry Chutney to go along with the pork recipe I posted. The cranberries in this chutney are tempered by dried cherries, helping to mellow out their tart, cranberry kick. The recipe is given a very subtle exotic accent by the addition of coriander and green cardamon. If you can’t find green cardamon pods then you can use ground cardamon or even skip it all together although I like the faint Indian flare it gives this chutney. Besides pork, this relish would pair perfectly with duck, goose, turkey, and lamb.

Cranberry and Dried Cherry Chutney
serves 8-10

6 pods green cardamon
1 tsp. whole coriander
1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 medium onion, peeled and diced
2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
1 Tbl. vegetable oil
1 cup orange juice
1/2 cup sugar
12 oz. fresh cranberries
1 cup dried cherries
1/4 cup crystallilzed ginger

Lightly crush the cardamon pods and remove the seeds, discarding the outer pod. Coarsely grind the cardamon and coriander together then add the ground cinnamon. Reserve. In a medium sized pot heat the oil over medium high heat. Add the onion and cook until translucent, about 4-5 minutes. Add the garlic, and spice mixture. Cook for 2-3 minutes to toast the spices. Add the cranberries, sugar and orange juice. Bring to a boil and cook for 5-7 minutes or until the cranberries start to break down. Add the dried cherries and cook 5 minutes longer. Add the crystallized ginger, cook 1 minute then remove from heat. Allow to cool and store in the fridge. While it is ready to eat as soon as it is cool, the flavors will more fully develop and meld if allowed to sit overnight, in the fridge.

I’ve recently be playing around with dehydrating as a form of preserving food, and making tasty treats thanks to my new dehydrator from Chef Talk. In the past, dehydrating hasn’t held a lot of allure for me, but I am the curious sort (for both better and for worse) and am always looking to try new things and experiment with new, at least to me, techniques.

Of course, one of the first things I’ve tried is fruit leather (beef jerky will be this weekend) as I have always loved those fruit roll ups. I wanted something a little more sophisticated, flavor wise and remembered the numerous bags of cranberries that were sitting in our freezer. Cranberries alone weren’t going to make a good fruit leather so I decided to pair them with apple, a classic paring and to spike it with just a hint of cinnamon. The resulting leather reminded me of those classic fruit roll ups but with a more complex, less overly sweetened flavor that adults would enjoy.

Apple Cranberry Leather

1 pound cranberries, fresh or frozen
4 pounds apples, peeled, cored and roughly chopped (choose apples that are both good baking and eating apples, I chose Braeburn this time)
Apple juice, or cider
corn syrup
1 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

Puree the cranberries, in a blender, until smooth, adding just enough apple juice to get the cranberries blending. Repeat this process with the apples, again using just enough juice to get the puree started. You want it to be thick enough still that you will need to stop the blender occasionally and push the contents down. Combine the cranberry and apple purees, stirring to combine. Add the cinnamon and just enough corn syrup to sweeten the puree to your liking. Use corn syrup as opposed to sugar as sugar tends to recrystallize making the fruit leather brittle. Flow the manufactures suggestions for making fruit leather in your dehydrator, making sure that the puree is no more than 1/4-3/8″ thick. Do yourself a favor and lightly oil the tray you make the leather on. It will help in removal when done. Dry at 130F for approximately 6-9 hours. The length will depend on a lot of variables including humidity, ambient room temperature, how much juice you added, etc. The leather is done when it is still pliable, but no longer tacky to the touch. Remove trays from dehydrator and allow to cool slightly. Remove fruit leather from trays and roll in plastic wrap.