As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I was the delighted recipient of 20 lbs. of freshly harvested Oregon cranberries this year. At a dollar a pound, plus a few bucks for gas, how could I resist?
But cranberries are nothing but ill-timed for the academic. I am plumb out of energy at the end of the term. This is the first year in many we won’t be having a big Thanksgiving party, and my husband’s new diet means he won’t be wanting his favorite stuffing and mashed potatoes, so the chances of me making a Thanksgivingish dinner for us are slim. Yes, a lean year chez Levin.
This means my old standby, punchy cranberry sauce, a long-cooked version treasured by me, myself, and I, may not make it to the table this year.
Going into my crazy cranberry glut, I had figured on that. I planned to turn most of the little darlings into dried cranberries for year-round use in salads and sweets. Which I did, making a holy mess in the process. They stubbornly refused to dehydrate and I stubbornly refused to cut each of them in half, so we battled for several days until some were sort of dry, then I boiled me up some simple syrup (a 1.5:1 ratio of sugar:water) and plunged the Rebels in to meet their sweet maker. I had received the advice from someone who had achieved “perfect Craisins” from this method, but whomever she was, she forgot to tell me that it also made sticky, drippy, half-smushed berries that had to be pried off the drying mats not once but twice. And I am almost positive she hadn’t battled with 10 lbs. of cranberries when achieving such perfection. My stove looked like something alive had exploded all over it. Something syrupy and gluey and alive. Bah.
And you can see from the above picture that my judgment was seriously off when I decided to make cranberry juice out of another 4 lbs. of berries. It would be a tight squeeze, I had thought, but I could make a double recipe of kissel, a Russian cranberry juice inspired by that made by Vitaly Paley’s grandma, in my biggest stockpot. I was so taken by the lovely image of kissel in a crystal pitcher nestled among bottles of vodka on the Paley family holiday table, I didn’t calculate the volume properly.
One of those tactical mistakes that you realize immediately after it’s done: cranberries float.
Cue more red, dribbly juice all over everything.
But the juice is absolutely wonderful: dense and crisp and crimson and silky. The pectin in the berries and unfiltered pulp make it slightly thick and filling. I doctored my juice with a couple of cups of unsweetened quince juice (frozen last year) and a healthy sprig of rose geranium. There was enough to freeze (or can, had I not fled town for that conference immediately after making the juice). I highly recommend making cranberry juice if you have never done it. Just use a big enough pot.
The recipe below was inspired by The Paley’s Place Cookbook recipe and another in the Ball Blue Book. It is so safe to can the BBB doesn’t even bother with exact measurements over a 1:1 ratio of cranberries:water, noting you can add sugar if you like. Cranberries are highly acidic little monsters, so no need to worry about botulism.
And because the juice is so lovely and pectin-rich from the cranberries and quince, I may just make a cranberry jelly after all. I think my stovetop still has a couple of clean places left. And if I hit the vodka-cran hard enough, the bloodshed won’t bother me a bit!
Important note: you might want to add more sugar to the recipe below. I wanted to keep it as low sugar as possible for my husband’s diet and flexibility with cocktails. You also might choose to add a few teaspoons of simple syrup to the juice before drinking if you like it sweeter. Serve it ice-cold, preferably with vodka and a thick slice of orange peel whose oils have been urged along with a quick flame from a match.
Fresh Cranberry Juice (Kissel) with Quince and Rose Geranium
(makes 2.5-3 quarts)
- 2 lbs. fresh cranberries (9-10 cups), sorted
- 4 quarts cold water
- 2 cups unsweetened quince juice (optional, substitute orange juice)
- 1 sprig rose geranium leaves (optional)
- 1 cup sugar (original recipe has 1.5 cups)
In a very large, non-reactive stockpot, combine all ingredients and bring to boil. Decrease heat to medium low and simmer about 30 minutes until berries burst and release their juicy goodness into the liquid.* (You might use a potato masher to extract more pulp, but beware: this will prevent any possibility of having a clear, thin juice later.)
Strain juice through a colander to remove the pulp. Discard rose geranium sprig, if using. Solids can be frozen, turned into a cranberry sauce of sorts, and/or spread thickly on a drying sheet with your drying cranberries, dripping juice all over the dehydrator and making even more of a mess that will result in a delicious cranberry fruit rollup to eat with cheese.
Taste juice and add more sugar as necessary.
Strain again (and yet again depending on your patience) through double-layered cheesecloth or a jelly bag to remove remaining solids.
If you have hopes of clear juice, place juice in refrigerator overnight and let sediment settle to the bottom of the bowl. Carefully ladle only the top layers from the bowl.
Juice will keep refrigerated for 2 weeks or frozen for 12 months.
To can juice instead of freezing: prepare pint or quart jars and lids and heat jars. Heat juice for 5 minutes at 190 degrees (don’t boil). Ladle hot juice into hot jars, leaving 1/4-inch headspace. Wipe rims carefully and adjust lids and rings, turning rings until finger-tight. Process pints/quarts 15 minutes in a boiling water canner.
*I had a note about the possibility of gelling, but I haven’t successfully boiled the juice to a gel set, so took it out. I have canned quarts of the finished product, and did not achieve a gel in 15 minutes, so perhaps this instruction was too cautious or relied on using more sugar.
For the first time in as long as I can remember, I traveled during Thanksgiving week. It was my first time in the south, and a very, very happy reunion in Atlanta hosted by my friends Ryan and Ashley Stotz, whom you may remember just as fondly from Marché Provisions or (in Ryan’s case) our dearly departed radio show, Food for Thought. They’re doing very well in the South!
From top to bottom: pumpkin pie infused with bay, fried chicken on a biscuit with cream gravy at Homegrown, some cheap swill with dinner, breakfast of vermouth-scented scrambled eggs with chicken livers, radicchio salad prep, collard overflow at the Piggly Wiggly (dba IGA).
Culinaria Eugenius 
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