Project 52 - Food

 I spent most of my life disliking cranberries and especially sauces. I think that's because my experience with cranberries came mostly from canned sauce or that jellied canned sauce you get at the store. You know the kind, the one where if you open both ends of the can you can slide that stuff out onto a plate in one fell swoop. I never liked it, it tasted like the metal can it came from with too much sugar for my taste. The taste of the berry was gone.

Problem is that my Hubby loves the stuff, especially slathered on a nice chunk of roast Turkey. So I went searching for some form of Cranberry Sauce that would rock his world and actually make me like the stuff. 

So I found quite a few different recipes and kind of cobbled together this one which I actually like. Who knew! 

Ingredients

 

1 12 oz package fresh Cranberries

1 Pomegranite, seeded

Zest and juice of one lemon

1 in. Chunk of fresh Ginger, grated

1 Cup Berry Sugar

1/4 tsp. Salt

2 minced Jalepenos

1 finely diced Granny Smith Apple

 

Put all ingredients except the Apple and Pomegranite into a pot and simmer on the stove for about 15 minutes.

Add the diced apple pieces about five minutes before Sauce is cooked. I like my sauce chunky and I liked that the pieces of apple had held their form during the cooking. 

 

Remove from heat and stir in the Pomegranite seeds into the hot sauce. I sprinkled the whole thing after putting the hot sauce into a bowl with fresh minced Cilantro. 

 

I found these wonderful Artisan baked crisps, Cranberry and Fennel flavoured crackers at our local market. The combination of chewy dried cranberries, spicy fennel seeds and pepper and crunchy cracker was perfect. 

 

I served the Crackers with Double Creme Brie cheese or with a chunk of Blue Cheese.  

 

My favorite combination was the Blue Cheese, Cranberry Sauce on the Crackers.

The tart cranberries, the crunchy crackers and the creamy smooth salty cheese was awesome.

Tempt my Tummy Tuesday

These with a nice glass of red Wine, something bold and jammy! Well, what more could you ask for, except maybe good friends to share it with, good conversation and laughs, making good memories!

Project 52 - Heat



Last week I dropped a little hint about where the strawberries I featured in my Ice post were going to end up. And here it is for you.

Strawberry Habenero Sauce

Hot, Hot Heat!

Here are the ingredients to make a batch of Sauce. No doubt this is one of the hottest things I have made! Habenero peppers are right up there on the heat scale. I did not use anywhere near the amount the recipe actually called for and even though I cut way back on the peppers, it still packs a wollup in the heat department!

My brother Brian would love this stuff! It is sweet, tangy, savoury and hot! Even if you don't use the amount of peppers called for or the amount I used, you should still give this a try!

Ingredients below!

I am sure if you are making this you could substitute another type of pepper for the Habeneros, but why not give it a try!!

Recipe:

3/4 lb. fresh Habeneros (I used 1/5 lb)

1 lb. fresh Strawberries

1 TBSP. Salt

1 1/4 cup Apple Cider Vinegar

3/4 cup Mango Nectar

1 TBSP. Honey

I would suggest that when you chop up the Habenero Peppers, you put on a pair of disposable vinyl gloves. You don't want to get this stuff in your eye later on. I also took the ribs and seeds out of the peppers as I chopped them up. Most of the heat comes especially from the seeds.

Put the chopped up Habenero's into the bottom of a pot, add the Vinegar and Salt. Cook on high heat for 7 to 8 minutes until the peppers are nice and soft.

Place the peppers and vinegar mixture into a food processor, add 1 lb. Strawberries, Mango Nectar and the Honey. Process the Hell out of it!

You can add more Mango Nectar to the sauce if you feel it is still too hot for you.

That is it. Bottle it up and give it a shot.

We tryed this with Saltine crackers with a chunk of Feta Cheese, Strawberry Habenero sauce and fresh Strawberry slices.

And after supper we poured it over Vanilla Bean IceCream with fresh Strawberries. The cold of the ice cream really helped mellow the heat of the sauce.

I have also added a good spoonful of it to our barbeque sauce and slathered it onto whatever is being barbequed at that moment.

And I made a batch of Bacon Jam and used a quarter cup of it in place of the chipotle peppers the recipe called for. Yum!

And just because I learned a new skill in Photoshop today and created a mosaic out of all the photos!

Still have some work to do here, getting the scale proportions right! Always learning!

Have a great weekend!

Cherry Barbeque Sauce



Linking up with http://lisaschaos.com/

It is a good day here to barbeque. Summer seems to have arrived with the outdoor temp at 32 Celcius and you sure don't want to be using an oven and heat up the house any more than Mother Nature can!

I bought a huge bag of Okanagon Cherries yesterday and today made some Barbeque Sauce with them.

The recipe asked for 2 cups of pitted Cherries. (It took more actually because I kept eating them!)

A simple recipe of just combining all ingredients and simmering in a pot on the stove.

Here it is cooked in the pot, ready to be cooled and bottled.

I like my Sauce chunky but you can puree it if you choose.

I also add less Brown Sugar than the recipe calls for as I like less sweet, more of the fruit flavour!

Cherry Barbeque Sauce

1 onion, finely minced

4 cloves garlic, finely minced

Saute above in 2 tbsp. Butter.

Add:

2 cups pitted fresh cherries

1 cup Ketchup

1 heaped tsp. dried red chili flakes, or heat to taste

1/2 cup Brown Sugar

1/8 cup Cider Vinegar

1/8 cup Balsamic Vinegar

1 tbsp Worcherstershire Sauce

2 tsp Ground Mustard powder

1/2 tsp. Ground Pepper

1/8 tsp. Liquid Smoke

Add all ingredients to lightly sauted onion/garlic mixture and simmer for 20 minutes uncovered till cherries are soft and mixture is thickened.

Stir in Juice and Zest of half lemon at end of cooking for that little added zing!

Bacon Wrapped Scalloped Potatoes

BACON WRAPPED SCALLOPED POTATOES

One pound thick sliced Bacon

3 large thinly sliced Russet Potatoes

1 large thinly sliced onion

Red Pepper Flakes

Garlic granules

Ground Pepper

Grated Cheddar/Mozzarella/Parmasan Cheese blends

In a 6 to 8 inch round Baking pan lay out Bacon Strips as above.

In bottom of pan, on top of bacon layer, layer potato, onion and Cheese. Sprinkle each layer liberally with Garlic granules, Red Pepper flakes and Pepper. Build three layers of this.

End the layers with Cheese at the top of the pan.

Fold over the bacon slices over the top to meet in the middle.

Sprinkle the top of the Bacon with a liberal dose of Fresh Ground Pepper.

Put a small lid on top of the middle of the bacon while baking. This will prevent the ends of the bacon from curling while baking. At the end of the second hour of baking remove the small pot lid to finish baking.

Put baking dish inside of a cake pan to bake. Bake in oven at 325 degrees for three hours.

When it is finished baking, put a lid on top of bacon and carefully drain the excess bacon fat into a container.

Then use a knife to loosen all around the edges and invert the potatoes onto a serving platter.

Sliced Tomatoes goes great with the Bacon.

Cut pie into wedges to serve.

Linking up with Macro Monday at http://lisaschaos.com/