Blossom to Stem

We are in the bleak mid-winter in Chicago, the ground crusted with snow, the wind face-bitingly, finger-numbingly cold. Apart from the rare bit of blue sky peaking out at us today, we have been living in a pallet of whites and muted grays.

I am getting tired of pilling scarves and hats and salt stained shoes. I am wearying of winter’s dinge.

I have been subsisting on one warm bowl after another filled with chilis and curries and ribollitas, ladled over rice or sopped up with bread. But as much as I love these comfort foods, I am ready for a break from them too. I’ve been longing for something vibrant, with a rich saturated hue and a bold flavor to cut right through the winter doldrums.

That’s where cranberries come in. These deep red beauties are still hanging around in the produce section of my supermarket, looking lonely in the wake of the holidays.

After sputtering in a pot, slipping out of their skins, simmering with sugar and a vanilla bean and a splash of Cointreau, and then being rounded out and thickened with a couple of eggs, these tart red berries are tickled into a luxurious velvety pink curd.

I think of cranberry curd as winter’s rosy cheeks, if such a thing could be jarred and spread on lemony muffins or cornmeal pancakes or whole wheat toast, or sneaked in little spoonfuls all by itself. It isn’t a summer jam, but a rich smooth sweet spread, with notes of vanilla and orange and just a hint of a pucker. Just the thing to brighten a buttery croissant and a mug of hot coffee on a mid-winter Sunday morning.

Cranberry Curd

Source: adapted from Nigella Lawson’s How to be a Domestic Goddess

This luxurious, brilliant pink curd is a cinch to make. Cranberry’s natural acidic tartness is tamed here into something sweet and round, but the berry’s bright fruit flavor remains strong. It would be right at home on a holiday table, but it really shines as an accompaniment to a simple breakfast or dessert. If you want to make this beyond the season when cranberries are available in the grocery store, stock up on a few extra bags and throw them in the freezer where they’ll keep for months.  

2 1/2 cups (8 ounces) fresh or frozen cranberries
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons Cointreau
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
fine mesh strainer or food mill

In a medium saucepan, heat the cranberries and water over low heat until the cranberries pop and split open. Press the cranberries through a fine mesh strainer or food mill, discard the solids, and return the puree to the saucepan. Add sugar, butter, vanilla bean (or extract), and cook over a low gentle heat until the sugar dissolves and the butter melts into the puree. Remove the vanilla bean and scrape the seeds into the puree (if you like, you can rinse and dry the bean and save it for another use). Remove the pan from the heat and allow it to cool slightly. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl. Add a little of the warm cranberry mixture to the eggs (this is to gently warm the eggs to prevent the eggs from curdling on contact with the hot mixture). Add the egg and cranberry mixture to the saucepan. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon. Be careful not to curdle the mixture by raising the heat too high.

When the mixture is thickened, push it through the mesh strainer, and allow it to cool before putting it into jars and refrigerating.

Yields about 2 1/2 cups of cranberry curd. Keeps in the refrigerator for several weeks.

The TED site has a great little lecture by Peter Reinhart up now. It’s worth a listen.

(If you are interested in improving your bread baking or just curious about how it works, you should check out his books.  I’ve been testing some recipes for his new book, and I can’t wait for it to come out.)

Welcome Dallas Morning News readers. If you were looking for a scoop of yellow watermelon sorbet, look no further.

My original post with the recipe can be found here.

The farmers markets have started back up again, it is late spring in Chicago. It is warm (mostly). And there are green things sprouting from the ground.

Although the magazines feature asparagus in April, the local stuff never shows up here until late May. It is still the early part of the growing season. A time for green garlic and radishes and rhubarb. About that rhubarb…

I was lucky enough to have special delivery of rhubarb from my parents’ garden when my brother was here a few weeks back. It made a lovely filling for an almond topped crisp. But I don’t have a picture. Or a recipe really. It was one of those toss-together-some-butter-and-sugar-and-ground-almonds-and-cornmeal-and-bake-for-awhile kind of things. And it was good and homey and comforting, but there are thousands of rhubarb crisp recipes that will get you, more or less, to the same place.

I have some more rhubarb waiting in the refrigerator. I have a few ideas for it, but I haven’t quite gotten to it and it’s been waiting for more than a week now. So we’ll see. I don’t have anything to share with you just yet. But I’m itching to get back to taking photographs and chronicling the ways that food intersects with my life.

But I’m busy just now.

Things are changing. I am getting ready to move.  There are boxes sitting in my apartment, waiting expectantly to be filled. There will be so much gathering and sorting and cleaning and unpacking and resituating in the next couple of weeks.

When the dust settles, I’ll be back here. Just give me a little time.