Cranberry Conserve

The first week of March was the kind of in-between week that requires patience from the cook and the gardener and the sugarmaker alike — the sap not yet moving in the maples, the ground still frozen too hard for any garden thought, the snow still deep enough to make the back forty look like deep winter even as the calendar insists otherwise. The thaw will come. It always comes. But it does not come on a schedule and it cannot be rushed, and the man who tries to rush spring in Vermont is the man who learns, year by year, the lesson of the place, which is that everything happens when it happens and not before.

I went down to the lower sugarbush Monday and walked the lines, looking at the trees, the way I do every March about ten days before tapping. The big red maple at the bend of the trail is in its hundred and twentieth year, give or take, and it has been giving sap to this family for eighty of those years, and I look at it now with the recognition you give to an old colleague who has shown up for work every season without complaint. There is a notch on its trunk where my father carved his initials in 1943, just before he shipped out for the Pacific, and the notch is now a healed scar shaped like a small E that has migrated upward as the tree has grown over the decades, the bark closing around the carving the way time closes around the things we mark on it. I touched the scar. I always touch the scar. I do not know why and I do not need to know.

Made a roast chicken Sunday — the simple roast, the test recipe, the truth-teller. Whole bird, salt, pepper, lemon halves and thyme in the cavity, butter rubbed under the skin of the breast, into the oven at four hundred for an hour and a quarter, basted twice with the pan drippings. The chicken came out the way a properly roasted chicken should come out, which is mahogany on top, the skin shattered when the knife went in, the breast meat juicy because of the butter under the skin and the dark meat fully rendered because chickens are not fish and need the full time. I ate it with mashed potatoes and the remaining peas from the freezer and was, for that supper, the same Walt who has been roasting chickens in this kitchen for fifty years and who will, with luck, roast a few more.

The "Roast Chicken for One" post is now three years old and continues to receive comments — about one a week, more in March for some reason, perhaps the season making people lonely or perhaps simply the time of year that drives a certain kind of reader back to the archives. I read each comment. I respond when a response is warranted. The most common message is a variant of: my husband died and I did not know how to cook for myself and your post helped me start. I do not have a clever answer for that message. I have only the one I started with three years ago, which was: you set the table for one. You eat. You wash the dish. You do it again tomorrow. That is the whole recipe. I add no other comment. The comment does not need elaboration. The recipe is complete.

The chicken had its jar of cranberry conserve alongside it on the table Sunday — a batch I’d put up in November, one of six, the last one left on the shelf. That is the whole argument for making conserve in the fall: so that March feels less like an ending and more like a pantry still doing its job. The recipe is simple enough that it asks almost nothing of you, which is what you want from a recipe on the in-between days, when the sap is not yet moving and patience is already being spent elsewhere.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 35 minutes | Servings: 16 (makes about 2 cups)

Ingredients

12 oz fresh or frozen cranberries (about 3 cups)
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup fresh orange juice (from 1 large orange)
1 teaspoon orange zest
1/2 cup golden raisins
1/3 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground allspice

Instructions

Combine the base. In a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan, combine the cranberries, sugar, water, orange juice, and orange zest. Stir to mix and bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally to dissolve the sugar.
Simmer until the cranberries burst. Reduce heat to medium and cook, stirring frequently, until the cranberries have burst and the mixture thickens noticeably, about 12—15 minutes. Press a few stubborn berries against the side of the pan with a spoon to help them along.
Add the fruit and spices. Stir in the raisins, cinnamon, and allspice. Continue to simmer over low heat for another 8—10 minutes, stirring often, until the conserve is thick enough to mound slightly on a spoon and the raisins have plumped.
Finish with the nuts. Remove from heat and fold in the chopped walnuts or pecans. Taste and adjust sugar if the batch runs particularly tart — different cranberry lots vary.
Cool and store. Let the conserve cool to room temperature, then transfer to a clean jar or container. It will thicken further as it cools. Refrigerate for up to three weeks, or process in a water bath canner for shelf-stable jars.

Nutrition (per serving)

Cranberry Conserve — What You Put Up to Get Through