Cranberry Sauce

It was supposed to be a pretty simple afternoon: a basic hand-made sauce to serve alongside the ever-important ridges-required canned variety. Trouble came when cranberries appeared in a 2lb bag instead of the 12oz that the recipe called for.

This is where normally the Gargoyle would recap basic trends in cranberry sauces found while searching about for the perfect recipe, but there's simply an overwhelming selection of them, and the possibilities more or less boil down to "yes, you can do that".

Add sweeteners of your choice, or don't, but probably do, it's pretty tart if you omit them altogether. Leave chunky, or use any number of techniques to achieve smoothness. Thicken or thin down. Use just about any seasonings in the "pumpkin spice" portfolio in any combination, or don't.

Most recipes called for a 12 oz bag, which means one could make two different ones, and end up with 8oz for something else.

The simplest way to cope with too many options was to look for consolidated lists that promised "Cranberry Recipes That Go Beyond Sauce", with Simply Recipes being the first promising find.

If it's worth doing, it's worth doing as a three-way, right?

• Basic Home-Made Sauce

• Cranberry Relish

• Boozy Cranberries

Before starting any of these, generic prep for bagged cranberries is wash them and pick through them to throw out any icky-looking ones. (Should you be the sort to like to wash your produce in a large bowl, don't be startled when cranberries float and endeavor to escape. They're supposed to do that.)

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Plain Ol' Cranberry Sauce

The original plan was to be lazy, toss together the tried and true version written down a few years back and have a relaxing afternoon.

Ingredients per recipe were:

• 12 ounces fresh or frozen cranberries

• 1 cup white sugar.

• 1/2 cup water

• 1/4-1/2 teaspoon/some Kosher salt

• optional 2 tablespoons/1/2 cup orange juice

• optional nutmeg, ginger

Methodology was pretty simple, too:

• Combine all ingredients in medium saucepan.

• Bring to a boil over medium-high heat.

• Cook, stirring occasionally until berries start to pop, about 5 minutes.

• Press berries against side of pan with wooden spoon and continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until berries are completely broken down and achieve a jam-like consistency.

• Remove from heat and allow to cool about 30 minutes.

• If wish to adjust consistency, stir in water in 1 tablespoon increments.

Previous notes indicated that this recipe was attempted in the past with less sugar, and also with substituting honey. 1/2 cup honey and 1/4 sugar required more honey. 3/4 cup honey and 1/4 cup sugar were attempted and found unsuccessful; a note asked "did orange juice help?" but no answer was recorded. The note further suggested going 50-50 on honey and sugar.

Regrettably there was not enough honey handy, so the recipe was followed with just the sugar. Also without the optional orange juice, because none was on hand, and also without any spices for simplicity and dietary sensitivity avoidance.

The "stirring occasionally" aspect required a whole lot more personal interaction than it really warrants. It wasn't terrible while one was prepping components for the other recipes, since one was in the kitchen already, so walking over and giving it a spin of a spoon was not hard, but one one finished with the prep for those, it was necessary to be actually mindful.

Verdict: way too simple and soulless, but a tablespoon of lime juice stirred in after taking it off the heat gave it enough of an extra note to elevate it into the realm of at least somewhat interesting.

However, insufficiently lazy for the payoff. One can achieve tastier results with much less watchfulness!

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Cranberry Relish

This relish recipe seemed easy enough to make and flexible enough to adapt or scale. A 12 oz bag is 3 cups, so it was perfect to account for the 8 oz left over from the other recipes.

Except it turned out that there are no oranges. It was really asking for a third ingredient in addition to cranberries and apples, and what was available was frozen cherries. So:

• cranberries, 2-ish cups

• apple, 1, particularly large and sweeter than the recipe intended, cored and sliced into chunks

• cherries, 0.5 cup, defrosted

Toss all that into food processor and give it the tiniest of pulses so as not to turn it into mush.

Move to a bowl. Stir in sugar in 0.5 cup increments until it seems sufficient. Sampling it after the very first half-cup, decide that substituting sweet ingredients for tart ones means that this is plenty sweet enough.

(At this juncture one can totally also add whatever seasonings one likes.)

Let sit at room temperature for a while before refrigerating.

Verdict: at less than a total of 10 minutes of effort, an absolute winner. Quick, adaptable, delicious.

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Boozy Cranberries

Cooking with alcohol will always gain the Gargoyle's attention, and the "Brandied Cranberries" were no exception. The ingredient list was simple enough, too... except for not having any orange zest. Or brandy. So then:

• cranberries, 12 oz

• sugar, 1.5 cups

• rum, dark, 0.5 cup

• triple sec, 2 tbsp (to get that oranginess to make up for the missing zest)

There was also little enough to mess up on the steps:

• Mix all the things in a loaf pan

• put into oven preheated to 325

• Stir every 20 minutes

• At 1 hour 20 minutes, observe that it's started foaming, panic, extract promptly (so maybe start checking it more frequently at the 1 hour mark)

• Stir a bunch to ascertain it's still ok despite the eruption; this breaks down any cranberries that aren't mush by then

• Allow to cool

• Eventually remember to run the oven self-clean cycle

What's a caprese with cranberries? Plymouthese?

Verdict: the recipe suggested that it's meant to be firmer than a regular sauce, and it was about the same firmness as the stove-top. However, despite cranberries' excess enthusiasm, neither their taste nor texture suffered in the least.

Easily the tastiest of the bunch, with an excellent balance of sweetness and tartness and the warmth of the cooked off booze, all for reasonable amounts of watchfulness. It was promptly served atop fresh mozarella with a bit of basil.