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E: This is a NICSA entry! You can't tell from the title, because I'm bad at posting!! I always thought I didn’t like cranberries much, but I sure had fun cooking with them for the challenge! Fresh cranberries smell surprisingly good when they’re in the oven/on the stove. I probably took too many pictures - and please forgive my clumsy attempts at fixing my terrible kitchen lighting by cranking the contrast up on them. Cranberry  RollsKimchi is great – I’m pretty sure you can put anything in it and not mess it up too bad. I made cranberry kimchi last year, but it was more a regular kimchi with some cranberries as garnish. This year, I tried to make them a more central part. First, I sliced up the cabbage and salted it. Purple cabbage looks more festive, I think, so I used that. I also sliced the cranberries thinly (massive PITA) and salted them along with the cabbage. I don't know if I had to do this, but it didn't seem to hurt anything   While the cabbage and cranberries were salting, I made the sauce. There's half an apple and carrot, a bunch of ginger, some garlic, onion, soy sauce, more honey than feels right, and gochujang in here. This is the first time I've had actual gochujang to put in my kimchi - it was surprisingly mild! I ended up at least doubling what's in this picture, and the final product was still pretty mellow.  The rest of the apple and carrot, more ginger, green onions, and a bit of radish (it felt wrong to leave it out) were sliced thinly to be mixed into the cabbage. It's all laid out here - this was probably too much sauce, but oh well!  This made an awkward amount of kimchi to store, but here it is packed up and ready to go! Don't worry, I think I packed it down tighter after I took the picture. At this point, the kimchi sat on the counter for a few days while I went home for Thanksgiving. And the final product! I meant to serve it with leftover turkey, but I didn't get to take any home so I had duck breast with it instead (more on that later). My cabbage leaves weren't cooperating, unfortunately.  Alright, it's not beautiful, but I was pretty pleased. It was spicy, salty, and sour as kimchi should be, with a bit of cranberry sweet tart coming through at varying strengths in each bite. I thought it worked! Duck Confit with Pickled Cranberry Started by boiling the cranberries in vinegar and sugar with a satchet of thyme, sage, rosemary, and juniper. Note to self: no matter how good cranberries and vinegar smell while simmering on the stove, do not stick your head over them and take a deep whiff of the steam  I did this at least three times Then it got   The brine and one of the jars was taken to Thanksgiving, where both were a big hit! We ate the pickle with dinner, and the brine made a really nice holiday gin cocktail when mixed with seltzer and an ice cube (or just the ice cube, for my mom).  When I got home, I started up a duck confit. Here's why you should let poultry defrost all the way before you try to break it down. The thigh bone just pulled right out of the meat when I tried to wiggle it around    After some more defrosting time, the second one turned out much better! I seasoned it with a bit of rosemary, pepper, juniper, garlic, and salt and let it sit in the fridge like that overnight. In the meantime, I threw together a rye bread dough to sit and have a slow overnight rise. I don’t have much to say about bread making, so here’s a gif because gifs are fun.   The crumb turned out decent, but the crust could have been a lot better.   I didn't have any duck fat on hand, so the next day I rendered down as much of the skin as I could (bonus: basically duck chicharrones) and roasted the breast and saved off the drippings. This gave a pretty good amount of fat, but I still had to add lard and olive oil in the end to even come close to covering the legs. Even then I chickened out at the end and didn’t add enough to completely cover the duck. I was afraid it would mess with the flavor (especially the lard). In retrospect, it probably would have been fine.  After moving everything to a smaller pot to make the most of the fat I had, I finally started the duck. The recipes I referred to were pretty vague/contradictory on the time and temp to cook it at, so I kept it pretty low and just checked on it every hour or so to see if it was tender enough yet. It didn't finish until too late to eat, so it went in the fridge overnight. It didn't look very appetizing at this point in the process, but smelled great.  The next day, I toasted bits of bread painted with duck fat, warmed my duck in the oven and crisped it in the broiler, then assembled!  This was very tasty! It was the first time I made confit, and I was afraid the pickle would overpower it, but I thought it was a nice sharp contrast to the rich, dark duck meat. I just wish I'd cut the bread a little thinner. Spiced currant cookies I'm not going to lie, I tried to dry my own cranberries, and it was a complete failure. They took way longer than my sources suggested they would to dry in the oven, and then half of them dried out and burned before the others got close. By the time they became unsalvageable, stores near me were no longer carrying fresh cranberries.  So I bought some currants and pressed on! I've made these cookies before and can't recommend them highly enough. They're perfectly spicy and chocolatey and not too sweet - I skipped the glaze because I think they're better without it.  Soaked currants in brandy, chopped the chocolate, and mixed up the dry ingredients. Annoyingly, this recipe calls for 5oz chocolate. I forgot to grab a second bar, so I just put 4oz in and didn't notice any ill effects. I also chopped my chocolate instead of grating, because I remembered it being really frustrating last time I made these. Looking back, that's probably because it was 110 degrees outside at the time, but whatever. It didn't hurt anything.  I start having less pictures here because I forgot to take them, but here are the cookie dough balls all made up and ready for the oven.  And out!  Spiced cookies and spiked eggnog make the perfect Christmas decorating snack :3 And that’s it! I’m glad I did this – most of these recipes were a learning experience for me in one way or another. UnbearablyBlight fucked around with this message at 06:39 on Dec 5, 2015 |
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Dec 5, 2015 06:37
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Great ideas. Especially the kimchi.
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Dec 5, 2015 20:20
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Fantastic entry! We will let you slide on the dried cranberry mishap, because that was seriously  , and I'm happy that you attempted it. Your kimchi is very innovative and everything looks delicious!
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Dec 5, 2015 21:06
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Oh man, I love kimchi (and steeped my cranberry shrub in old kimchi jars), but I have NEVER thought about including cranberries in it. Thanks!
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Dec 6, 2015 00:19
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Yeah, cranberry kimchi and and the pickled cranberries both just sound super good. Just great ideas.
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Dec 7, 2015 16:14
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