Cranberry Creations For Christmas

 

 Cranberry Creations For Christmas

For the Christmas holidays, I decided to use festive cranberries in both savory and sweet offerings.  Cranberries make their way to our markets just once a year so I’m taking advantage of them now for my holiday menus.  I’m featuring cranberries in a delectable sauce accented with orange for both puff pastry appetizers and a baked pear dessert.  Along with selected cheeses and nuts, I have some perfect combinations for your holiday enjoyment.

 

 For my puff pastry appetizer, I’m using store-bought puff pastry.  I’ve made puff pastry dough before and it’s quite time-consuming and exacting.  The dough is made by repeatedly rolling, folding, and chilling a butter block of dough which creates hundreds of layers.  The moisture in the butter turns to steam when baked and this causes the dough to rise into those flaky, buttery, airy, and crisp layers we love.  If you’re not making your own puff pastry, there are options out there in the frozen dessert aisle of the market.  As far as brands go, I recommend Dufours Puff Pastry.  If you look at the ingredients list, the first item, being the dominant ingredient by weight, is butter.  Other brands list their first ingredient as enriched wheat flour and have no actual butter in the product.  Puff pastry is all about the butter, so go with Dufours.

 Rosie’s Cranberry Sauce

1 cup cranberries, picked over  (Discard any bruised, shriveled, soft, or blemished berries.)

Juice and zest of 4 mandarin oranges (¼ cup orange juice)

¼ cup brown sugar

Combine all ingredients in small pan over low heat.  Cook at bare simmer, stirring occasionally, until thickened, about 15 minutes.   Let cool to room temperature.

 

 

 Puff Pastry Appetizers

1 sheet Dufours puff pastry, gently rolled into a 6 x 12” rectangle, and cut into 12 equal pieces

About 12 TB cranberry sauce

12 cubes of cheese (See note below.)

Toasted nuts, chopped (See note below.)

1 egg white, beaten, for wash

 Rosie Note:  

I’m  pairing 3 different cheese with 3 different nuts:

·         Bleu cheese with walnuts.

·         Brie cheese with pistachios.

·         Goat cheese with pecans.

 Don’t forget to lightly toast the nuts first.  Toasting concentrates and intensifies the nutty flavor.

As for the cheese and nut pairings, I happen to like those particular flavor affinities, but you could certainly substitute different melting cheeses and nuts here for your own palate-pleasing combinations.

 

Place each piece of puff pastry into a buttered mini-muffin tin, pressing dough over the sides to anchor.

 Divide cranberry sauce equally among each pastry – about 1 TB per pastry.

Nestle a cube of cheese in center of sauce.

Brush egg wash over pastry dough.

Bake at 400° for about 13 minutes or until golden brown, rotating muffin pan halfway through.

Remove from pan and place on serving dish.  Press a sprig of rosemary into the centers, maybe spatter with a few thyme leaves, and sprinkle toasted nuts over top.

  

Goat cheese and pecans.

 

 Bleu cheese and walnuts

 

Brie cheese and pistachios.

  

Next, I have a versatile sweet and savory baked pear dessert.  Again, I’m offering 3 choices of cheeses with nuts, or you can use your own flavor combinations here.  The rosemary-infused honey-butter sauce brings this dish to another level, deliciously complementing both pear and cheeses.

 

Baked Pear Dessert

 Pears, sliced in half and scooped out in centers, allowing for filling

Cranberry sauce (Recipe above.)

Rosemary-infused honey-butter sauce (Recipe below.)

Cheese cubes – bleu cheese, brie cheese, and goat cheese

Sprinkling of toasted nuts - walnuts, pistachios, and pecans

Sprigs of rosemary

 

 Honey-butter sauce

 In small sauce pan, combine:

2 TB unsalted butter

¼ cup honey

Several sprigs of rosemary

Heat ingredients over low heat, mashing rosemary with a wooden spoon to infuse the flavor.  Cook low and slow until butter is melted and ingredients are well-combined.

 Arrange pear halves on a baking sheet and brush generously with honey-butter sauce.

Bake 15-20 minutes in 375° oven.  Fill centers with 1 -2 TB cranberry sauce and add cheese.  Brush again with honey sauce and bake until cheese is melted and gooey, about 10 minutes.  Apply more honey sauce and sprinkle with toasted nuts. Again, I prefer walnuts with bleu cheese, pistachios with brie cheese, and pecans with goat cheese.  Place a sprig of rosemary in each center and serve.

 

Bleu cheese and walnuts.

 

 

Goat cheese and pecans.

 

 

 Brie cheese and pistachios.

 

Enjoy!

 

 

 

Rosie Makes Tomato Soup.

 

 

Weather - cool, cloudy.  

Tomato soup requested.

And thus, it is so. 

 

Maybe I should do 

whole recipe in haiku. 

That would be a kick. 

 

At the beginning,

We have our ingredients. 

And so we embark.

 

 

 

Nothing like soup on a gray, cloudy, cold, rainy day.  It's like a hug for your stomach.  Mr. Hawthorne has been jonesin' for some tomato soup lately, so that's what we're having today.

 

Rosie's Tomato Soup 

2 TB unsalted butter 

1 onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced 

1 14.5 oz. can chopped tomatoes

2 fresh tomatoes, peeled and chopped (Not really necessary, but I had them on the counter and they begged to go into the pot, so they did.) 

1 cup chicken stock 

1/2 tsp kosher salt

scant TB sugar

1 tsp freshly ground pepper

1/4 cup chopped basil

1/2 cup cream

grated Parmesan Reggiano cheese 

basil chiffonade  (A chiffonade is a French technique for cutting basil. Stack the leaves on each other, roll the pile up lengthwise like a doobie, and make thin slices across.  You end up with long curls of basil.)

 

 

Rosie Note:  I have to admit I used boxed stock.  Didn't have time to chase down one of the chickens in the backyard, wring her head off, and throw into the stock pot. But by all means, you go ahead.

 

In a medium pot, heat 2 TB butter over medium heat until bubbly and foamy.  Add onion and sauté 2-3 minutes until softened.  Add in the garlic and sauté for a minute.  Always be careful not to burn garlic; it gets bitter.  

Add in the can of chopped tomatoes.  I happened to have 2 tomatoes sitting on the counter that were looking at me longingly, so I peeled and threw them into the pot.  Add salt, sugar, and pepper.  Sugar tames the acidity of the tomatoes.  Bring to a boil and reduce to simmer. Add in the 1/2 cup basil. Partially cover and cook over low heat for 10 minutes.   

Purée the tomato soup.  I use an immersion blender. 

Add in the cream.   Heat through.

  Taste test and adjust for salt and/or pepper.

 

 

To serve, add basil chiffonade on top and sprinkle on some grated Parmesan-Reggiano cheese.

 And I like to have a nice grilled cheese sandwich on the side for dipping.

 

                                         Now for the step-by-steps:

 

    

My mise-en-place.

Get everything ready so all you have to do is reach out and grab it,

not have to go tearing through a pantry or cabinet only to find it's not there. 

Chopped onion into the foamy butter.

Then the garlic.

Pour in the can of tomatoes.

I used Muir Glen.

                                               Add in the chopped fresh tomatoes.

                                                    Add in the chicken stock.

                                                     A good bit of pepper.

                                              Some sugar.  Balances the acidity of the 'maters.

                                                                Basil.

 

                                                            Immersion blender.

                                                            Handy little gadget. 

                     If you don't have one, ladle a little bit of soup into a blender.

  

                Don't fill it full of hot soup, then try to purée it. You'll have a mess. 

 

                                        Blend it until you get the consistency you like.

                                           I like my purée/chunky.  

                                            The best of both worlds.

                                                          

Add a little cream for enrichment.

Immersion blend some more.

                                                                    Et voila!