Cranberry Citrus Sauce

Ingredients

• 1 – 12 oz. bag of fresh cranberries, rinsed and judiciously picked over, under ripe cranberries are bitter
• ½ cup orange juice
• ½ cup water
• ½ cup brown sugar
• 1 Tablespoon of fresh lemon juice, Meyer lemon is preferred – it’s sweeter than a typical Eureka lemon
• A pinch of salt
• Finely ground fresh pepper – pink peppercorns would be amazing here because they are slightly sweeter than other peppercorns, but black or white will work, too.
• ½ cup dried cranberries

Instructions

1. Heat the sugar and water to a boil in a medium sauce pan.
2. Reduce the heat to a gentle simmer, add the orange juice, lemon juice, salt, pepper and both fresh and dried cranberries for a textural -flavor play.
3. Gradually stir the cranberry mixture until the heat causes the fresh berries to burst and pop, about 7- 10 minutes.
4. Once most of the berries have popped, remove it from the heat quickly and taste to adjust the flavors (a little more sugar if too tart or more lemon juice if needs to be brighter) -
5. Transfer to a lovely bowl; the cranberry sauce will thicken as it cools.
6. * if the cranberries cook too long the sauce will develop a bitter note and it’s hard, if not impossible to remove the flavor.
7. This sauce can be cooked up to a week in advance, refrigerated and then brought up to temperature over low heat before serving.
8. Serve it with pork, too!