Berry Good
As ingredients go, cranberries are underappreciated.
Here’s how four local chefs (and two jam ladies) are turning this around.
Think beyond quick bread, jellied sauce and thanksgiving. the Cape Cod cranberry has expanded it’s repertoire from such traditional fare and has claimed a starring roll on the plates of chefs and diners year round. This icon of the Cape has become part of an exciting trend in fine dining and home cooking nationwide.
We asked several local chefs and cranberry aficionados for their thoughts this season, and we discovered that this local berry crops up on local menus, in salads, entrees, after-dinner drinks and desserts.
For Peter Hyde, executive chef and owner of the Blue Moon Bistro in Dennis, the cranberry makes it’s mark by the glass. Hyde’s cranberry cordial is a mix of fresh cranberries, sugar and vodka, combined and set aside to ferment. By the time the mixture macerates, Hyde says, it’s a sweet cranberry nectar, almost a syrup, which he serves as an after-dinner drink, often paired with Blue Moon’s lavender crème brûlée. “Every year I have a customer who brings me a crate of cranberries from his bog. I make the cordial and give him a few bottles of this wonderful brew, which he gives as Christmas gifts. It’s a nice exchange,” Hyde says.
Cranberries are a year-round staple on the Blue Moon menu, most prominently in the dried cranberry, arugula and goat cheese salad. Hyde’s cranberry purveyor provides New England cranberries, and though dried, he says, they are still plump and moist. The berries balance the spicy arugula, and complement the fresh pears, crumbled goat cheese, toasted almonds and the citrus vinaigrette dressing. “It’s one of our most popular items,” Hyde says.
Bill and Denise Atwood, owners of the Red Pheasant Inn on Route 6A in Dennis, have been enticing patrons for the last few years with their cranberry port reduction served over boneless roast duckling. Dried cranberries, port wine and seasonings combine to make this cranberry gastrique. “It’s pretty popular,” Bill Atwood says. “It really has that local flavor. Cranberries and Cape Cod.” The Red Pheasant also features dried berries on it’s duck confit salad, with walnuts, Cloumage — an artisinal cheese from Shy Brothers farm in Westport — and a sherry mustard vinaigrette. Bursts of flavors — tart, sweet and savory — account for this salad’s success. In the fall, Bill Atwood says, he likes to add a favorite recipe, panna cotta with cranberry sauce, to the seasonal dessert menu.
Tina Labossiere and Debbie Greiner opted for a more traditional use of the scarlet berry, but have added a new twist of flavor. The two women met as playgroup moms and have been making their jellies based on this local fruit for 12 or 13 years, now doing business as the successful Cape Cod Cranberry Harvest Inc. The women still work out of Greiner’s home kitchen in Harwich and produce 20 flavors of their cranberry jellies and more than 20,000 jars per year. New this season are cranberry basil, cranberry rosemary and cranberry mint jelly, as well as cranberry strawberry and cranberry raspberry. Greiner and Labossiere have taken their business wholesale, and market their jellies at area Shaw’s Supermarkets, local artisan fairs, shops and at least three farmers markets per week in season. They buy their berries, both red and white, from the Thatcher bogs in Harwich. the women buy enough to fill six freezers, and usually run out in September, just in time for the new harvest. The two originally marketed their red pepper jelly, but upon the advice of Greiner’s husband, sought their “niche market” with the local cranberry.
“It’s a year-round business, seven days a week,” Labossiere says. “When we’re not making jelly, we’re marketing it.” Their business is truly local; they buy sugar a pallet at a time from “wherever it’s on sale” in town and their jars from a Massachusetts business, also a pallet at a time. The fresh herbs and other ingredients they buy locally from Ring Bros. Market.
Their cranberry pepper jelly is the top seller, but the true unique flavor, Labossiere says, is the white cranberry pepper garlic. She suggests serving this on oysters on the half shell, or baked with a round of brie wrapped in a crescent roll. “We’re exclusive,” she says of this jelly. “No one makes this.” People are curious about the white cranberries, she says, and often approach them during the tasting events to ask if it’s simply the color that’s different. “White berries are not as tart,” Labossiere says. “They’re sweeter. The white cranberry jelly flavor tastes more like an apple pie flavor. It’s opposite of what you would think.”
At the Summer Stock Restaurant on the grounds of the Cape Playhouse in Dennis, owners Joe and Beverly Dunn pride themselves on using fresh, local produce and ingredients in season. The couple also own the Island Merchant on Main Street in Hyannis, and the seasonal Islander restaurant at Crosby Boat Yard in Osterville.
Regarding the cranberry, Beverly Dunn says, “We’re fortunate to have something the Cape is known for that is so versatile and can be used in so many ways, from cocktails, to entrees, to desserts.” a favorite on the Summer Stock menu is the dayboat cod stuffed with crab and roasted cranberries, which Joe serves over butter whipped potatoes drizzled with a marscapone reduction.
Lydia Broderick, pastry chef at the Dan’l Webster Inn in Sandwich for the last four years, has high praise for cranberries, too. “I love their tang, their tartness,” she says. And is you haven’t had your fill of the ruby-colored berry consider ordering a Cranberry Cape Codder Scrub, high in antioxidants, from the body treatments menu at the Dan’l Webster Inn’s Beach Plum Spa.