I think the year was 2000. I was living on 15th and Tustin, in Newport Heights at the time, with a Girlf (that’s shorthand for “girlfriend”). It was the Tuesday night before T-Giving, and we were doing some prep for a small “Orphans’” dinner we were doing for friends the next night. I realized that I was missing several of my ingredients for my world-famous cranberry sauce. Well, in truth, I was missing everything but the whiskey. In the immortal words of The Waitresses, it was “on with the boots, back into the snow, to the only all-night grocery”, and off down the street to Ralph’s.
I grabbed my fixins, and headed back to the hacienda, to start on the sauce. But wait, there’s more…
So I was in the second (straight) lane on Tustin, headed South across 17th Street. I thought to myself, “Self, why don’t I pop over to Alejandro’s, and grab a couple of brekkie burritos?” (This was waaaay before Midnight Muncheez was born.) This resulted in the most expensive cranberry sauce of all time.
Instead of moving to the third (right -turn) lane, I made a right turn, headed West on 17th Street, toward Alejandro’s. WOOT WOOT! A motor from Costa Mesa pulled me over immediately. A brief conversation followed, and the end result was a nice, $285 citation for an…wait for it…”Illegal Right Turn”.
So there’s my story. The reality is, this sauce is so good, that people go back for just my sauce after their T-Giving meal. OK, maybe they go back for some more mashed potatoes and gravy too. Enjoy.
Illegal Right Turn Cranberry Sauce
Ingredients:
• 1 (12-oz) bag fresh cranberries
• 1- ¼ cups sugar
• ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ¼ teaspoon nutmeg
• ¼ teaspoon allspice
• 1 cup Rye Whiskey (I like Wild Turkey) or Bourbon (I like Rittenhouse)
• ½ cup non-vinegary hot sauce (I like Cholula)
• 1 tablespoon orange zest
Method:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Combine the cranberries, sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg in a small baking dish and cover. Bake for about 55 minutes. Remove the cover and stir to melt any un-dissolved sugar. Return the dish to the oven and bake for about 5 to 10 more minutes, or until the cranberries are soft and surrounded by a syrupy sauce. Remove the dish from the oven and immediately stir in the whiskey, and hot sauce to taste. Fold in the orange zest. Let the dish cool to room temperature, then chill for at least hour before serving.
Yield:
6-8 servings
