Cranberry Sauce Recipe with a Twist

This is a good place to give a great cooking tip...always read the entire recipe through before you start.

This recipe calls for soaking the apricots in sherry for 8 hours or overnight so you don't want to do this Thanksgiving Day.

Spirited Cranberry Apricot Relish

Ingredients & Method

1/2 cup thinly sliced dried apricots (about 3 oz.)
1/4 cup sherry or orange juice
3/4 cup water
2/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup honey
1-12 oz. package of fresh or frozen cranberries

Soak the sliced apricots in the sherry (or o.j.) for eight hours. Combine the water and sugar in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Add the apricots (with the sherry), honey and cranberries. Cook for 8 minutes or until slightly thickened.

Cover and chill.

One year while we were housesitting in Manhattan Beach, California over the holidays, I decided to make this cranberry sauce recipe.

There was no sherry in the house and I really wanted to get this started so I spied a bottle of cognac in the pantry...not just any old cognac, either. It was Courvoisier XO "Imperial" Cognac. From France. Retails for about $150 for a 750 litre bottle. So I used it. In the recipe, of course! Oh my goodness, it was lovely!

Did you know that cranberries are closely related to blueberries? They are. Did you know that cranberries were wild fruits in America in the seventeenth century and it was the pilgrims who came to America who began the tradition of preparing and serving cranberry sauce with the Thanksgiving turkey?

The Native Americans used cranberries for a multitude of medicinal purposes and used every part of the cranberry from the fruit to the leaves to the roots. They called cranberries sassamanash.The Pilgrims used cranberries to make dyes.

1 cup of raw cranberries contains:

Calories: 47
Protein: > 1 g
Carbohydrate: 12 g
Dietary fiber: 4.0 g
Total fat: 0.2 g
Saturated fat: 0 g
Monounsaturated fat: 0 g
Polyunsaturated fat: 0.1 g
Cholesterol: 0 mg
Potassium: 67 mg
Sodium: 1 mg

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KEY NUTRIENTS (%RDA / AI)
AI = Adequate Intake
Vitamin C: 13 mg (14% RDA / AI)

Source: Wellness Foods A to Z by Sheldon Margen, M.D. and the editors of the
"UC Berkeley Wellness Letter" (UC Berkeley)

I've used dried cranberries (also known as craisins) in muffins, salads, and a variety of breads. They're also delicious tossed into homemade granola. Try adding cranberries to your Thanksgiving stuffing recipe. Cranberries in rice pilaf? You bet!

Search the links below for a lot of wonderful looking recipes using cranberries.