T’was the day after Thanksgiving and all through the house leftovers were lurking causing family to grouse. You get the idea – we had a ton of food and the same menu was beginning to wear thin.
So I put Richard and our friend Daniel to work turning a happy Thanksgiving dinner into a festive Tex-Mex menu. The first thing on the list was to create a cranberry salsa. Sweet, hot, and salty is just the best of taste combinations. We are picky about cranberry sauce. We make our own. It takes about a minute to assemble and 15 minutes to cook.
The cranberry sauce keeps for a long time in the fridge – sort of like jelly. The recipe for this sauce is adapted from one a friend gave me years ago. It’s slightly weird because it has ginger, red pepper flakes, and garlic salt in it but I promise it’s delicious. Following is the simple recipe if you decide to take the extra step. BUT, I know that good cranberry sauce can be bought in a can and that’s perfectly OK.
After you put all the ingredients together and give them a spin in the food processor, it’s going to be marvelous which is, after all, the ultimate goal! For our cranberry sauce simply cook a 16 oz. package of fresh cranberries with 2 cups of sugar and 2 cups of water. Add 4 Tbsp each of brown sugar and vinegar plus a ½ tsp each of ginger and garlic salt and a pinch of red pepper flakes. Simmer for 15 minutes and cool completely in the fridge It’s good, but it makes plenty. Creating salsa is an excellent remake. With the salsa done, the rest of the menu was fun to invent. We enjoyed turkey taquitos and quesadillas, pinto beans simmered with leftover ham and even an interesting version of mashed potatoes turned into “Mexican tator-tots”. The salsa was good with everything. Thankfully there is a bit of salsa leftover and today I plan to get some cream cheese and serve it on top with crackers. Yum!
Ingredients
1 cup of whole berry cranberry sauce
½ onion, roughly chopped
¾ cup canned diced tomatoes, drained
½ jalapeno, roughly chopped
½ red pepper, roughly chopped
1 lemon zested and juice
¼ cup of cilantro, stems removed
½ tsp salt
Directions
Add all ingredients to a food processor and pulse just to combine not liquefy.
Store in the fridge – keeps several days.
