Slow-cooker turkey with cranberries

skinless turkey breast half or 2 turkey breast tenderloins (1 1/2-2 lbs)
up to 1 Thsp vegetable or olive oil
up to 2 yellow onions, thinly sliced, to taste
2/3 cup port (optional)
2 cups chicken or turkey broth
1 Tbsp cornstarch
8 oz. dried cranberries
1 stick cinnamon or 1/2 Tbsp ground cinnamon
1 orange or tangerine, peel on (but washed and blemishes trimmed off), thinly sliced

Trim fat from turkey if needed; place turkey in slow cooker and start it warming while you make the sauce.

Cook onions in oil until lightly browned, about 10 min. Combine port or some of the broth with cornstarch, mixing to remove lumps. Add to onions and stir well. Add remaining stock and simmer, stirring, about 7 min., until sauce thickens and becomes translucent. If using ground cinnamon, stir it into sauce now.

Pour sauce over turkey. Cover with cranberries and orange slices; add cinnamon stick if using that form. Cover and cook on low 6-8 hr., until turkey is done and sauce is thick.

Adapted fom: The gourmet slow cooker, vol. II : regional comfort-food classics / Lynn Alley. Ten Speed Press, 2006. 9781580087322

The rest of the story

Our local food bank often has turkey -- especially ground turkey, but larger chunks are frequently available. They also have a lot of chicken, but I've been trying to get more protein and iron and it seems turkey is the thing for that. So I dug around and found this turkey recipe.

Not too surprisingly, it turned out pretty similar to cinnamon orange chicken, a little less bland with the cranberries and not quite so much in need of rice or noodles under it. I wonder how it would come out with cranberry juice (real juice, not that flavored sugar-water "cranberry juice cocktail" stuff) instead of some or all of the broth. Hmm, and maybe ginger, cardamom, and/or grains of paradise with the cinnamon. When cranberry season comes around next year I'd also like to try it with fresh cranberries (by the time I finish this batch, get another suitable package of turkey, and want to make it again this season will be over). In the meantime I've got quite a lot of chopped figs....

Possibly it was supposed to be more oniony. I only used 1/2 cup of pre-chopped, frozen onions, since I consider onions more of a seasoning than a vegetable.

The food bank tends to have lots of onions in the late fall and winter, but like supermarkets they usually only have fairly large ones, much bigger than I'm going to use in one dish. I've read that it's not healthy to keep an onion once it's been cut, so I could potentially waste a lot of half onions here. So instead, I bring home several onions, chop them up while I'm hanging about the kitchen watching something cook, and stick them in the freezer. This way I have actual onions ready to go, no more bother than onion powder but a lot nicer. I'm unlikely to make stuffed onions or use the things in huge honking wedges, so that pretty much covers my onion needs. If I did decide to use larger pieces of onion, I could always start again with a new onion; the frozen ones will keep.

Esperanta traduko: this post is also available in Esperanto, because Dana is a language geek.

Cranberry season again

While searching through my recipes for how long to process the cranberry sauce I was canning, I came across these interesting recipes from 1921. Since the food bank often has fruit toward the end of its season, I decided to go ahead and share them. Enjoy!

Cranberry Butter
three pints cranberries
1/2 cup water
2 cups sugar (or 2 cups white corn syrup)

Cook the cranberries and water until the skins of the fruit are broken, then press thru a sieve. Cook this pulp until it becomes quite thick, add the sugar (or syrup, if you use it) and cook for 1/2 hour over a very gentle fire, stirring constantly. When slightly cool, turn into jars and cover closely. This makes a delicious and healthful spread on hot biscuits, bread, buttered toast or cake.


Cranberry pie
Have ready a partly baked pastry shell. When cold, pour in filling made from cranberry sauce recipes; put strips of pastry over top and finish baking in a moderate oven.



Cranberry Mock Mince-Meat
2 lbs. chopped apples
3 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup chopped citron
1 1/2 cups cranberry sauce
1/2 cup vinegar
1 1/2 cups chopped raisins
1/4 teaspoon each of cloves and cinnamon
1/2 cup water
4 tablespoons lemon juice

Put all ingredients into a kettle and cook slowly until thick.

Cranberry Mince-Meat
To the above recipe [i.e. Cranberry Mock Mince-Meat] add:
1 1/2 cups cooked beef hearts put through a meat chopper
1/2 cup stock in which hearts were cooked

From: Cranberries : twenty-five ways of preparing for table / Leila W. Hunt. Extension Service, State College of Washington, Nov. 1921 (Bulletin No. 76).



Esperanta traduko: this post is also available in Esperanto, because Dana is a language geek.

Beyond cranberry sauce

Tradition dictates that this is when I should post a recipe for cranberry sauce, but since the internet already has approximately two cranberry sauce recipes per sauce-eating adult on the entire planet, I'll just say that there's no reason to eat the canned stuff if you've got a source of good cranberries since it's about as difficult to make as chocolate milk, but start with no more than half the sugar or other sweetener in the recipe and work up.

Instead, here are a couple of intriguing recipes from Olympia's Bloom Creek Cranberries, who plan to be at the Olympia Farmer's Market at least through the next couple of weeks.
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Kathy's cranberry fudge

1 1/4 cup fresh or frozen cranberries (1 bag Bloom Creek cranberries)
1/2 cup light corn syrup
2 cups chocolate chips
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup evaporated milk
1 tsp. vanilla
1/3 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

Boil cranberries and corn syrup on high 5-7 minutes, stirring occasionally, until reduced to 3 Tbsp. Remove from heat and stir in chocolate until melted. Add remaining ingredients and stir vigorously until thick and glossy. Pour into a plastic-lined 8x8-inch pan, cover, and chill until firm.
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Felix's cranberry pork chops

Mix equal parts cranberry sauce and barbecue sauce. Spoon over pork chops and bake at 350F until done.

Versión en español: this post is also available in Spanish
Esperanta traduko: this post is also available in Esperanto, because Dana is a language geek.

Cranberries

native to: Northern Europe, Asia, and the US, and Canada
in season here: late fall into winter

Contrary to the popular image, cranberries don't require an actual bog to grow in, although they do need plenty of water and acidic, sandy soil and will grow in one (and what else are you going to grow there?). They're a member of the Ericaceae or heather family, related to blueberries, bilberries, and lingonberries, and grow on low creeping shrubs with thin branches and small evergreen leaves. Cranberries are also called bounceberries because they bounce when ripe (a quality actually used commercially to sort them), and craneberries because their blossoms look a bit like the heads of cranes. The berries float, so flooding the field is the easiest way to harvest them. Most of the big commercial fields sell the biggest, juiciest berries to juice manufacturers, so once again a farmers' market is the best place to shop.

Cranberries were used by Native Americans as food, decorations, medicine, and dyes. The American cranberry, Vaccinium macrocarpon, is the most widely-grown variety, having the biggest berries, but other species such as the European cranberry (Vaccinium oxycoccos) can be found throughout the northern hemisphere and the smaller-berried Vaccinium microcarpum is common in northern Europe and Asia.

Cranberries are rich in phyto-nutrients that offer protection against cavities, urinary tract infections, cancer, neurological diseases, and inflammatory diseases, and may support the immune system in general. They also have a lot of antioxidants and are useful against cholesterol problems. They're a good source of all sorts of nutrients, providing lots of vitamins A, C, E, and K, beta-carotene, lutein, zea-xanthin, folate, potassium, and manganese. They'll turn urine acidic, which helps prevent the formation of alkaline stones in the urinary tract, although the oxalic acid can form its own stones, so be careful if that's a concern for you, and be sure you're getting plenty of water with your cranberries. You should also be careful of cranberries if you're taking warfarin or need to build up minerals such as calcium.

Cranberries are most commonly consumed as juice, but this is not the best way to get all those great phytonutrients. Also, many "juices" are mostly water and sugar, so be sure to check the fine print on those labels.

Read more:
label-style nutrition information for raw cranberries
label-style nutrition information for sweetened dried cranberries
www.whfoods.com
Nutrition and You
Medical News Today
Authority Nutrition

Versión en español: this post is also available in Spanish
Esperanta traduko: this post is also available in Esperanto, because Dana is a language geek.