Fresh cranberry relish for Thanksgiving

In 10 minutes, you can have a side dish that’s infinitely better tasting that the canned product most people secretly loathe.

SPLOTSCH! That sound can only mean one thing at this time of year: canned jellied cranberry sauce, and according to last year’s Harris poll on behalf of Instacart, it’s the most-hated side dish of Thanksgiving.

Yet, millions of cans are sold every year, which means this food item that’s been around since the 1940s is either brought to the table only to be later thrown away or it’s being used in another application (perhaps as a base for glaze).

The Wisconsin State Cranberry Growers Association reports that this super fruit is high in antioxidants, which can help to improve our immune systems (more important now than perhaps ever before), but only about 5 percent of cranberries are sold as fresh fruit. The rest is used to make sauce, juice, dried fruit, and other in applications. More fun cranberry trivia: It takes 4,400 cranberries to make a gallon of juice.

While I feel a little guilty to disparage the invention of Mr. Marcus L. Urann, let’s make 2020 the year we forget the canned cranberry sauce and make this fresh and way-more-delicious alternative.

Cranberry relish is the right blend of tart and sweet.

Now, I get it; traditions die hard. As a kid, I remember our Thanksgiving table had the gross jellied cranberry sauce as well as this fresh relish. I suppose this duality of fruit was offered in the spirit of giving dinner guests whatever they wanted. But hear me when I say the aroma of this relish being made screams Thanksgiving every bit as loudly as a roasted turkey coming out of the oven. In addition, when you make your own cranberries, you get to control the amount of sugar used, so if you prefer something a bit tart, cut back from the cup that’s in the recipe.

Each year, Mom made the cranberry relish a day or two in advance, another brilliant point to this side. Early prep allows fruit to macerate with the sugar, better mingling the flavors. Still, the cranberries will have a little bite to them—as opposed to the jellied mush of canned sauce—but I quite prefer the texture.

Now, I make the cranberry relish, and just as Mom did it, the recipe begins with The Beast.

"The Beast" is Mom's food processor from the 1970s.

This thing is so old the only online reference to it is a shot of an owner’s manual with no accompanying information. Our manual is long gone, but my best guess is that Mom either bought this appliance in the early 1970s or it was a holiday gift from that era. In addition to the cranberry relish, she’d haul out The Beast to make French onion soup (lifesaver), mix a stiff dough, and handle other unsavory kitchen tasks. I believe she felt The Beast somehow upped her cooking game. It was a “chef-y” kitchen appliance for her, and Mom felt somewhat empowered by having it on hand.

The plastic casing now is yellowed, but the motor somehow works just fine. It easily weighs 10 pounds (catch your finger under one of its little legs when you set it on your counter and there will be stars before your eyes). It rests on the bottom of my baker’s rack, and every now and again when I glance over at it, I can hear it faintly say, “feed me Seymour, feed me.”

(If anybody has any history of Mighty Chef Corporation, I’d be curious to know more.) Drop a comment at the end of this post.

Anyway, back to cranberries. This relish recipe is almost as easy an opening a can.

After rinsing the cranberries, it’s time to give The Beast what it wants, which is to finely chop the little red spheres so that you can transfer the fruit to a mixing bowl. After which time, you can core one apple (your choice, but I usually use a sweeter apple because the cranberries are tart) and cut it into quarters. Grind it up in The Beast and scoop out the apple into the bowl. Next, remove seeds from half an orange and trim off ends (I used a Clementine because I didn’t have a navel orange in the house). Feed it to The Beast…you see the pattern here.

The Beast finely chops cranberries plus an apple and orange in seconds.

Add the sugar (1 cup is in recipe, but you could cut it back to ¾ cup without a problem). I also add ½ teaspoon each of ginger (fresh or powdered) and allspice. Should there be any larger parts of orange peel in the bowl, just pick it out and discard. Mix it all together, cover, and refrigerate.

The food processor does all the work! If you don’t have The Beast or any food processor, a blender would chop the fruit for you, but you might have to play around with the settings.

You may ask why are cranberries—one of only a few commercially grown fruits native to the United States—are part of Thanksgiving. Cranberries were grown by Native Americans, including the Wampanoag, who still today celebrate the cranberry harvest. Were fresh cranberries part of that infamous meal in 1621? Who’s to say, but I think it’s important to remember the Wampanoag on Thanksgiving.

For many Americans, this holiday can be overshadowed by our dark history of atrocities committed against Native Americans. Sadly, this is a history we cannot erase, but I hope we can learn from it and become better, more sensitive people with each passing year. For me, a ridiculously simple act of making a dish from fresh cranberries is a food conduit to a Native people I’ll probably never meet. Let us this Thanksgiving remember to give thanks for Native Americans around this country and for their traditions.

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Fresh cranberry relish

Yield: About 6 cups

With the right balance of sweet and tangy, this side dish is a fresh complement to the day’s mix of rich gravy and sauce. It’s also a wonderful condiment for those leftover turkey sandwiches.

Ingredients:

1 (12-ounce) package of fresh cranberries

1 apple

½ orange

1 cup granulated sugar (or less, depending on your preference)

½ teaspoon ginger

½ teaspoon allspice

Method:

1. Place rinsed cranberries in a food processor and pulse until chopped. Transfer to a large mixing bowl.

2. Add the cored apple to the processor and repeat process.

3. Add the orange to the processor and repeat process.

4. To the fruit mixture in the bowl, add 1 cup of sugar, ½ teaspoon fresh or dry ginger and ½ teaspoon allspice.

5. Mix until all ingredients are combined, cover and place in refrigerator for at least two hours before serving.

Fried corn for Thanksgiving

This simple side dish featuring sweet corn is easy to make and sure to please everybody at your table.

Fried corn is a delicious side dish to try for your Thanksgiving this year.

Can we drop the pretense and be honest about the Thanksgiving menu this year? It’s really about the side dishes, including fried corn. There. I’ve said it. Turkey is sort of like that relative who’s not that well liked but for whatever reason is invited each year to the table.

In fact, according to a 2019 poll by Thrillist, 42 percent of millenials served something other than turkey for a Thanksgiving main dish. You can understand the decision; look what people do to this poultry to give it flavor: inject seasoning, butter or brine; fry or smoke it; stuff it with enough aromatics to choke a steer. You get the picture.

Although my very traditional family always had a whole roasted turkey for Thanksgiving, the table was filled with scrumptious side dishes: savory sage dressing, silky mashed potatoes, tangy cranberry relish, green bean casserole, as well as a new vegetable recipe for most years. We all got to pick a favorite, and for my dad, it was always fried corn. As such, this side dish was always part of our Thanksgiving. Now when I’m invited to Thanksgiving or Friendsgiving, this is the dish I bring. It’s part of our tradition, and I’ll make it again this year.

As a history lover, Dad probably liked this side dish for Thanksgiving because he believed it tied our dinner into the original feast. But was corn part of that meal shared by the Pilgrims and Wampanoag at Plymouth in 1621? Short answer, yes, evidenced by historical documents. Kathleen M. Wall, foodways culinarian at Plimoth Plantation—the living history museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts—often speaks to the subject of “the first Thanksgiving” at this time of year. In a Smithsonian magazine article, she noted corn grown by the Wampanoag was used to make bread or porridge. Other items on that table included wildfowl (maybe wild turkey, but more likely something else), venison, eel, and shellfish.

But as a curious cook, I wanted to find out more about the history of Dad’s favorite corn dish. Turns out it’s a Southern classic that’s enjoyed year-round, not just for Thanksgiving. Plenty of Southern food blogs have this recipe, and writer Andrea King Collier several years ago wrote an interesting piece the detailed her “discussion” with an editor over the authenticity of the recipe for a Thanksgiving issue. Collier said fried corn is a treasured dish for African American families and was enjoyed for Sunday dinners, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Check it out.

Sometimes called corn maque choux (“mock shoe”) in Louisiana, this fried corn dish could be a beautiful mash up of Creole and Native American food traditions. Whatever its origins, most of the fried corn recipes I’ve seen use fresh corn cut from the cob. However, we always used either frozen (thawed) or canned whole kernel corn. Why? My guess is when corn was in season, we were too busy grilling or steaming it to eat right then and there without much forethought to freeze a few bags. Anyway, other common ingredients include bacon, onion and peppers. Many recipes include either milk or cream; we didn’t do that, probably because the kernels didn’t have to tenderize while cooking. We did finish the dish with butter, though. But no matter what iteration of this classic recipe you make, it’s simply delicious and was always cleaned up at our table. There was NEVER leftover fried corn the next day.

If you still need some convincing, consider this; corn is the top-ranked canned vegetable. And considering how quickly this side dish comes together, you can prepare it on Thanksgiving without any trouble; it also can be made ahead, but a splash of cream would be nice when reheating this dish.

So, on the topic of fried corn (as well as many others), Father really did know what’s best.

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Fried corn

Serves 6

Ingredients:

2 (15-ounce) cans whole kernel corn

1 yellow onion, chopped

1 sweet red bell pepper, chopped

5 strips of bacon

2-3 tablespoons butter

Salt and pepper to taste

Parsley to garnish (optional)

Method:

In a large skillet (use cast iron if you have it) over medium-high heat, cook bacon to well done. Drain the corn. Save rendered fat and remove bacon, placing it on a paper towel until later.

To the skillet add the onion and bell peppers and sauté until onions start to turn translucent. Add drained corn to skillet and stir to combine. Cook for about 15 minutes until the vegetables just start to caramelize. Take off heat, stir in butter, salt and pepper and serve, garnishing with parsley if desired.

Jalapeno and Cheddar Cornbread Dressing

Like so many young cooks, I desperately wanted to impress the family with my culinary skill. Instead, my respect for Mom and Grandma deepened alongside my serving of humility.

I’ve no idea what came over me that November in 1980-something-or-other, but something prompted me to volunteer to cook the entire Thanksgiving meal for my family. Almost 40 years later, I can look back and chuckle at this episode.

Don’t get me wrong; I’ve contributed to a good number of Thanksgiving meals over the years. When I was married, I’d bring side dishes to in-laws’ houses. As a single who would sometimes tag along with a friend to a Thanksgiving gathering, I usually got away with bringing a bottle of wine. This year, a couple of girlfriends and I are thinking about doing Friendsgiving because their kids are not able to travel due to COVID-19 restrictions. But if the number of virus cases keeps climbing in my area, I may have a turkey sandwich at home in front of the TV ( recipe to come, so stay tuned).

But the year my mom and grandma nervously stepped back to let me do Thanksgiving, I did it all, from roasting the turkey to making pecan pies. The meal—inspired by a menu from Bon Appetit magazine—began with a beef consommé, followed by a salad, main course, dessert, and coffee. I can’t remember the vegetables, but then nobody else did either.

To add to my already high stress level, Mom invited her usually grumpy brother, Louis. Uncle Lou rarely smiled and exhibited a stone face most of the time. Frankly, he scared me a bit. Not that he was a cruel man; one just never knew what he was thinking, and I found that unsettling.

What was probably unsettling to my Mom and Grandma was me straying from the “traditional” menu. No green bean casserole or cranberries, and what was with this jalapeno cornbread stuff? What happened to good old-fashioned dressing? As the most popular side dish, screwing around with the stuffing (or dressing) recipe on Thanksgiving would make any traditional cook break out in a sweat (and not from the heat of the peppers).

I never again made a full Thanksgiving meal. Even after Dad died and it was Mom, my daughter, and I at the table, she and I collaborated for our small celebration. This dressing recipe I share with you today is a mash up in homage to my mother and that fateful holiday dinner from the mid-1980s. My one stab at Thanksgiving—while stressful but ultimately satisfying—taught me new respect for my mom and grandma who carried out this incredible task year in and year out.

The point to this story is this: Some of you may be staring at the prospect of making the full Thanksgiving dinner on your own for your family this year. Let me say you can do this! Maybe your family can't travel this year due to COVID-19 or it could be the matriarchs of your clan aren't able to get to you to help with the dinner. Still, this is an absolute example of "if I can do it, you can do it," so head up, shoulders back, and strap on that kitchen apron! The keys will be proper planning and enlisting family members to help. Make it a special time, no matter what the menu looks like. If you want some tips, hop over to our Facebook page and follow a month's worth of ideas and recipes.

And this year, no matter how I celebrate the holiday, I’m most thankful for good health. Remember, Thanksgiving shouldn’t be about impressing people with your knowledge of cooking; it’s about simply being with the people you love. Wishing all of you and your families a beautiful Thanksgiving. Please stay well and take care of each other.

Jalapeno and Cheddar Cornbread Dressing

Serves 10-12

Ingredients:

2 (8.5 ounce) packages Jiffy corn muffin mix

4 eggs

2/3 cup milk

1/4 cup jalapeno peppers, cored, seeded and diced

1/2 cup sharp cheddar cheese, freshly grated

8 ounces breakfast pork sausage

1/4 cup unsalted butter

3/4 cup celery, chopped

3/4 cup onion, chopped

2 cups chicken stock

1 1/2 teaspoons dried sage

1 teaspoon garlic powder

1 teaspoon dried thyme

1 teaspoon black pepper

Method:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease a 10-inch rectangle baking dish.

Combine muffin mix with 2 eggs and milk. Fold in peppers and cheese. Bake as directed on package.

Remove cornbread and let cool. Reduce oven to 350 degrees. Crumble cooled bread and place flat on a baking sheet to dry for 5 to 10 minutes.

In a large skillet, break up breakfast sausage and brown. Remove sausage from skillet and add 2 tablespoons of butter, celery and onion. Cook until just tender.

In a separate large bowl, combine two eggs, chicken broth, sage, thyme, garlic powder, and pepper. Stir in sausage and vegetables. Fold  in crumbled cornbread.

Spread in a prepared baking dish, top with 2 tablespoons of butter and cover with foil. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes, remove foil and bake another 5 to 10 minutes until dressing starts to brown.