Next up, cranberries

After the pho lunch, I walked to the Art Institute for one of the final events of this year's Humanities Festival, a performance of Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8 and Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time. The Shostakovich piece had been arranged for a brass ensemble instead of strings, which initially put me off, but the trumpets, French horn and trombone were able to render the mournful piece with delicacy and sensitivity. The Messiaen piece, which I've admired for years but seldom seen performed, proved to be an exquisite fifty minutes that gave me goosebumps and received a standing ovation from the auditorium.

Walking home through Grant Park in a chill dusk I looked forward to something warm. And sweet. My recent Traditional Chinese Medicine workup has advised me to avoid sugar, and while my sweet tooth is a modest one by American standards, it is something that needs to quelled in some manner or another on a nightly basis. I had been looking forward all week to doing something with the fresh cranberries I bought earlier in the week and I figured a low-sugar fruit crumble with the added challenge of remaining wheat and gluten free would offer an interesting experiment.

I peeled and sliced into 1/4 inch pieces 4 Gala apples and 2 pears (I'm not sure of the variety.. they were deep red). Into a bowl I tossed the fruit with a 1/2 tablespoon of cornstarch, about a 1/8 cup of a sugar and cinnamon mixture I had in a baggie on hand from a previous concoction. In another bowl I assembled the crumble topping: about a cup of chopped pecans; about a cup and a half of Enjoy Life cinnamon crunch granola which is a low-sugar, gluten free (and honestly not very flavorful) granola consisting of brown rice flakes and rice bran; a scant tablespoon of sugar; about half a cup of oat flour; and about 3 tablespoons of ghee. Stirring all of this together, the ghee did the job of binding agent, moistening the whole dry melange into a harmonious mass. I think I could have used oil instead and kept it totally dairy-free, but I'm still experimenting with ghee and wanted to bake with it and see how much butter flavor it would impart.

I spread the fruit mixture into a glass baking pan sprayed with canola oil spray and then spooned the crumble topping over it. Into a 325 degree oven this went for 45 minutes, or until I saw the fruit bubbling, the cranberries broken open and the pecans in the topping nicely browned. We each ate a bowl of this hot out of the oven with a scoop of vanilla So Delicious soy ice cream on top of it. It satisfied my sweet tooth and delivered both crisp and velvety textures and a rich flavor overall, in spite of the gentler caloric and fat profile.