Cranberry Sauce, with Orange

1 bag of fresh cranberries
1 cup white sugar
1 cup water
2 strips (1/2 inch x 3 inches) orange zest (just the orange part of the peel, without the white stuff)

Pick over the cranberries, wash them and put them in a saucepan together with the sugar, water and orange zest. Bring to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring from time to time.

Skim off any strange white foam, remove orange strips and transfer the cranberry sauce to a nice bowl. Refrigerate.

Emergency Cranberry Sauce: Should you find yourself in a big hurry, make the sauce as above, then put the hot sauce in a metal bowl, and place this bowl over ice water. Stir the cranberry sauce to cool it down, without allowing the melting ice and surrounding water to creep into the sauce. You are basically using the ice water bath to cool down the outside of the bowl that your sauce is sitting in, and stirring it to make sure all of the sauce gets cooled quickly. Using this method, you can go from a hot sauce to the table in under a quarter of an hour.

© Gf-Zing! | Alice DeLuca