[Sca-cooks] Cranberry substitute

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Suey <lordhunt at gmail.com> wrote:
> Quince is an autumn product here. Someone else mentioned rhubarb which 
> is not yet in season but I can get guava pulp frozen. Now I have my 
> gravy so I am not looking for a sauce but rather a jelly. I think I can 
> handle that! We shall see how it goes!

Perhaps you have never had cranberry sauce, Suey, although i know you spent time in the US. The commercial canned variety is not a sauce at all, despite its name. It is very thick, often with whole berries in it, but even the kind without whole berries is extremely thick. It is more like a fruit paste than a sauce and it can be cut in slices and it doesn't run.

Homemade cranberry sauce is also not a sauce, although it is more runny. It usually isn't gelled like the canned variety, but it is quite thick, more like a fruit preserve or fruit compote, with whole cranberries or chunks of cranberries and additional large pieces of fruit. Because of the pectin in the cranberries, the liquid the berries are cooked in gets quite thick.

That is why a Medieval compost, or some other preserved chunky fruit or some sort of sweet-tart fruit compote, would be a reasonable substitute.

As has been mentioned, cranberry "sauce" is quite tart. I think Ranvaig's suggestion of sour cherries (usually not available fresh here in the US, but i don't know about where you are in Chile) is a good one, cooked with whatever summer fruit would add both sweetness and tartness. Here in the US we often cook cranberries with oranges...

So a slightly cooked compote made with whole strawberries, orange segments, and some compatible spices (cinnamon, clove, ginger) might work, too. I know that strawberries are grown in Chile, and since you are in Spring moving into Summer, i assume that you can get them fresh.

Urtatim (that's ur-tah-TEEM)