It was a sea of red yesterday in the akHOME Kitchen!
A LOVELY friend (and incredible photographer Bryce) brought me a box of her family farms cranberries and I had a free day to spend trying various recipes! I’m hoping to figure out these recipe plug-ins eventually (anyone know of a good one?!), but for now I’ll happily share some random shots and musings from my daily adventures in the Kitchen.
I decided to try a few things with the cranberries – a saucy chutney that pairs well with pork or turkey, dehydrated for salads and morning yogurt, candied in cardamom syrup to add to a dessert I’m making on Friday, macerated in simple syrup just because – and a bag frozen for another day, another project (likely some cocktail bitters!).
The dehyrdrating took awhile… The berries this were soft, but far from “dried”, but after a few days they were somehow puffy AND dry, and could do a crunchy POP in your mouth like the poprocks candy, which amused the kids to no end…
For the saucy chutney (I’ll have to come up with a proper name for an actual recipe LOL!) I added red wine, pears, creamy fig balsamic, fresh garden thyme and a few other yummies. It was still *just* tart, and paired perfectly with a fatty Porchetta roast I’d cooked for dinner! And it’s a good thing, too – approx 7lbs of cranberries canned quite a bit to last us through Fall/Winter.
On the other side of the Kitchen, I separated a few batches of fresh pumpkin seeds and seasoned half with hot smoked paprika (it just GOES WITH EVERYTHING!! I love it!), and the other half with simple salt/pepper and EVOO. Some were oven baked, and some went into the dehydrator just to compare – I have to say, I still love the smoky flavors of the oven baking, but the dehydrated ones still had a lot of PLUMP and had more of a nut texture. I’ll grind some down for topping salads over the next month.
Combing some humble pumpkin seeds and dried cranberries together made an elegant snack / welcome at a recent dinner party I hosted – and everyone loved them! Fancy enough to serve with vintage French napkins and Limoges dishware 😉
Et voila! Any given day in the Kitchen here is never the same as another, but that’s what keeps cooking an adventure! Any tips and tricks you’d like to share?
OHHH which reminds me – I HAVE SOME FOLLOWERS already – you know who you are 🙂 THANK YOU! I’m just beginning, and it may be sparse for now, but thank you for finding me and joining in the adventure.
