Rock-Your-World Cranberries
I feel like I've been dancing around this one for a few posts now -- I keep alluding to the mysteriously adventurous cranberry sauce that includes ingredients some Thanksgiving traditionalists (read: My Mom) might categorize under "newfangled:" Ginger, mint, raw, fresh cranberries. (We've never been a molded-from-a-can family, but we have definitely been in the boil-them-down-to-jelly camp.) The recipe, Cranberry-Orange Relish, is from Bon Appetit's Andrew Knowlton, and offers the perfect fresh-and-bright hit on a plate piled with rich, buttery, beige-y starches. (And hopefully piled high.) Last Thanksgiving, it was so good, so necessary, that I found myself not just tolerating it for the sake of tradition, as I usually do, but actually loving it, going back for seconds, and all year long dreaming of making it again.
Related: The Official Application for Submitting a New Dish to the Thanksgiving Table.