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Post by Laura_in_FL on Nov 25, 2022 10:42:54 GMT -5
So for Thanksgiving I made Florida Cranberry Sauce with the calyces from my Roselle plants. This recipe was my base: www.edibletampabay.com/recipes/make-it-fancy-like-florida-cranberry-sauce/The changes I made were: 1. I chopped the calyces finer than they show in the photo. 2. I used a dash each of cardamom and nutmeg, and several dashes (~1/2 tsp or a bit less, I would guess; I didn't measure) of cinnamon. 3. I bought oranges to zest and juice. With other cranberry sauce recipes I learned that using zest and juice from fresh oranges makes a lot of difference. 4. I did add more sugar to taste. I had expected the sauce to thicken up after 20 minutes of simmering, But even after I cooked the sauce longer than recommended, it still was really thin; I knew it wouldn't set when it cooled. So, I used one envelope of Knox gelatin to firm it up. With the gelatin, it turned out a nice soft jam consistency, just thick enough to stay where you put it on your plate and not run. Review: Quite tasty, and almost an effective cranberry sauce substitute. Flavor was definitely better after overnight in the refrigerator - it was "smoother" and the flavors blended nicely. Most everyone who likes cranberry sauce liked it. The criticisms were: 1. The pieces of Roselle were too soft to pass as cranberries - not surprising after the extra cooking trying to get it to thicken. 2. The pieces of Roselle were too small - easily fixable. 3. It wasn't quite as sharp as cranberries; the sauce had tartness but it was somehow a "mellow" tartness rather than a "bright" tartness. I think next time I will cut down the orange juice and zest somewhat and replace them with an equal amount of lemon zest and juice to give it a more assertive brightness. I am not sure how much lemon to use; I'll need to play with it. It is definitely a repeat in my book. It just needs a bit of tweaking. One more thing I may experiment with is reducing the overall amount of liquid, to see if it will thicken it without needing to add gelatin. But I'll have the gelatin on hand, just in case.
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