Pie of the Week - Cranberry Pie

This week - a pie and a bonus condiment!

Cranberries are in season and I was inspired by our Thanksgiving hostess, Kim, and her cranberry relish recipe to try to make a pie with it. After my first taste of her relish, I was reminded of a good mincemeat filling, but this was ever so slightly more tart and bright, both in flavor and color.

I've cooked cranberries perhaps twice in my entire life, both so long ago I barely remember how they turned out. It was an orange-noted conserve of some sort, which no one else would eat.

After the Quince Near-Debacle, I was feeling a little more cautious about this pie. Would the cranberries cook inside the pie crust and hold together when the pie was sliced? Or should I hedge my bets and follow Kim's recipe strictly, cooking the entire filling first? Would that liquid component all end up at the bottom of the pie in a gooshy mess? Would it be too sweet or too tart?

Would it be, you know, good?

The recipe for the filling (thank you, Kim!) was

2 packages of fresh cranberries

1 cup of orange juice

1 cup of sugar

to taste: raisins, chopped dried apricots, and other fruit (grated apple?) to taste (I used about a cup total of raisin and apricot)

to taste: cinnamon, grated or chopped fresh ginger (or powdered), clove

Kim's instruction for the relish calls for boiling the juice and sugar on the stove, and then adding the fruit and spices. This mixture would be cooked until the cranberries popped. Using the ingredients listed above, it's the best cranberry relish I've ever had.

For the pie filling, I opted for the following modifications:

1c. combined orange and cherry juice

1/2 c. sugar

1 tsp. each cinnamon, clove

I cooked the juice and sugar, adding about a tablespoon of chopped fresh ginger. I strained the ginger out and then poured the liquid over the cranberries, raisins, and apricots. I added a tablespoon of flour to the fruit mixture and stirred it in with about 1/2 tsp. of ground ginger.

I loaded all that into two 8" pie shells, topped it with a few pats of butter and a full top crust, and baked it for about 50 minutes. I used a hotter than normal temperature of 425 degrees, to make sure those cranberries really cooked. I watched, I brooded. It smelled nice.

This pie turned out better than I had reason to expect, based on my pie-on-the-fly mods to a recipe I'd never made. No, there was no pool of wet goo at the bottom. Yes, the cranberries cooked thoroughly and sufficiently to hold together upon slicing. As you can see, the pie has a bright crazy pink color - like strawberry-rhubarb pie - and distinct pieces of fruit with their own flavors and textures intact. It evokes a holiday mood and immediately induces good cheer, even before you bite into it.

I would do it all over again; however, next time, it needs the full cup of sugar. Yes, really. As constructed this week, it was pleasantly tart but almost at the edge of pleasantness for sensitive palates. A bit of ice cream would temper that very well if you need a foil for those cranberries. The spicing was a little too conservative in this pie - the ginger, cinnamon, and clove could be increased to 1.5 to 2 tsp. each. Fresh cranberries seem to easily overpower spice, so I don't think subtlety is what you're after. One modification that I will introduce next time is to add a splash of rum to the boiled liquids.

I can't think of too many fruit pie fillings that double as a chilled holiday condiment. I am thrilled that this recipe works for both. Do you have any other recipes like this to share? Sac Pie would love to hear from you!