Sugar Cranberries

With Felicia Mohan

To Felicia Mohan these sugared cranberries are something that she places along with nuts all around her holiday house. She says that they are “Where sweet meets tart, and a family favorite.”

The first thing you have to do is sort a bag of cranberries by removing any that are bruised or overripe, setting aside. Heat 2 cups of water and 2 cups of sugar to make a simple syrup. Place the cranberries in the heated syrup and place in the refrigerator overnight. The cranberries are going to become slightly soft and some may even split open.

The next day strain your cranberries and place them in a pie dish filled with superfine sugar and roll around until well covered. Remove them carefully with a wire mesh ladle so that you do not disturb them very much. The less you touch them the better they will look.

Ingredients

2 cups granulated sugar
2 cups water
1 bag fresh cranberries cleaned and sorted removing any over ripe cranberries
1 box super fine sugar

Instructions

1. In a medium size pan bring sugar and water to a boil over medium/high heat.
2. Remove sugar water from heat and add cranberries.
3. Carefully pour mixture into a plastic container and fasten container with coordinating lid.
4. Place container into refrigerator over night.
5. Remove container from refrigerator and stain cranberries in a colander.
6. Place super fine sugar into a pie plate.
7.  Working in batches, place a handful of cranberries into sugar and gently shimmy the pie plate rolling the cranberries across the sugar until all sides of the cranberries are evenly coated.
8. Gently place cranberries into a serving bowl.

Recipe courtesy of Felicia (Ciaramitaro) Mohan, 2011.

From "Food For Thought" Column by Heather Atwood: Felicia Mohan lives in a sparkling new house in Gloucester, and has twin 11-year-olds: Amanda, playing 12-year-old tennis and ranked No. 32 in New England, and B.J., a catcher for AAU Baseball who will play in the Gloucester All-Star 11-year-old team. Felicia looks like a beautiful, modern mother, struggling to get her kids where they need to go while keeping up with life at home, but Felicia is also adamant about preserving her family's Sicilian heritage, particularly the dishes her grandmother, another Felicia, prepared. Felicia Mohan's grandfathers were named Joseph Salvatore Ciaramitaro — both of them, spelled the exact same way. One Joseph fished first from his boat The Benjamin and Josephine, which was sunk by a German U-boat off the coast of Maine, and then he fished from his Benjamin C, named after his father-in-law, Benjamin Cucuru. Later he founded Capt'n Joe's Lobster Co. on the wharf in Gloucester, now run by Felicia's brother, Joey, and cousin Frankie. Felicia's other grandfather owned Pat's Center Grocery, that not only sold groceries but provided all the fishing boats with food for their long trips, delivering the "speza," as the supplies were called, to each boat before it left port.
Grandpa with the wharf was married to Felicia's namesake. Holidays at this Felicia's house began a full week ahead as all the women in the family gathered at her home, which had two full kitchens, to cook together. When school let out at 3, the children went straight to Grandma's house that week because that's where their mothers were cooking. Not only were these women making all the traditional Italian holiday foods, from appetizers such as octopus salad, a standard which the men insisted upon at every holiday, to a wealth of Italian cookies, homemade bread, and New World foods such as pies, but the women were also making ordinary dinners those weeknights for all their husbands and children. Felicia and Joseph have passed away. Now, holiday meals are at young Felicia's, where 35 to 40 people come to celebrate. Felicia, like her grandmother, still sets a formal table with china and linen; her custom-built table seats 25, with two more tables in the great room for overflow, replacing her grandmother's enormous table that started in the kitchen, extended through the dining room, the hallway and ended at the living room. In her large, creamy, new kitchen, Felicia still makes dishes like braciole, spiedini, and olive gonzathe. She makes videos for this newspaper showing how to prepare her grandmother's special bread crumbs, "mudiga," with chicken and steak. This past December, Felicia gathered all the cousins together to make their great-grandmother's Santa Lucia dessert, "cuccia," a vanilla pudding made with wheatberries which the playful great-grandmother had always encouraged the children to eat in a race. Contact Heather at heatheraa@aol.com. Her blog is at gloucestertimes.com/foodforthought