Recipe: Spiced Cranberry Pear Sauce

I love cranberry sauce, but not the disgusting, gelatinous stuff you extract from a can. I'm talking about the made-from-scratch cranberry sauce which is full of texture and just the right blend of tangy and sweet. For the past several years, I've been making an old Martha Stewart recipe for cranberry sauce on Thanksgiving, and I do believe it's the best thing ever.

In light of this, I'm not sure why I decided to try something different this year, but this recipe for Spiced Cranberry-Pear Sauce from Clean Eating magazine looked good and easy, so I thought I'd give it a try. I whipped up a batch today, since it can be made several days in advance. Click on the photo to read the recipe. (And yes, the Pear Pie recipe next to it looks pretty good, too, but is much, much more involved. And quite possibly beyond my skill level.)

The verdict on this recipe is that it is simple, healthful, and a nice change, but I still prefer my previous recipe. I'm glad I tried it, but next year I'm going back to Martha.

The recipe calls for all of 6 ingredients plus water. I can handle that.

Cranberries are surely one of the most festive foods around. They look pretty before you even do anything to them!

The combination of cranberry, pear, ginger, and honey sounded really good to me. And it is!

Add the cardamon and sea salt, and this recipe starts to take on a bit of an exotic flair. I have only used cardamon in Indian cooking, but I read on the container that it is also used in Scandinavian dishes.

Cook it until the cranberries start breaking down and the mixture begins to thicken. I got distracted (cat-related incident) and let it cook a little bit longer than it should have, so my final product isn't as lumpy as I expected it to be.

Near the end of the cooking time, I sampled the mixture and determined that the honey wasn't a strong enough sweetener, so I cheated and added a couple of teaspoons of sugar. It's no longer sugar-free, but it tastes better!

Let the sauce cool then seal in an air-tight container. 

Go, me! One dish is ready to go for Thanksgiving!