Cranberry Sauce With Port

I searched through my journal to find a copy of my cranberry sauce recipe. Evidently, I've never tried to write it down. I do have several process-y entries about it, including these snippets from Thanksgiving 2004:

Used food processor, because, well, have food processor, and shredded my Brussels sprouts and grated my Gruyere. Will also use food processor, because, well, have food processor, to slice potatoes for gratin. Will not use food processor for onions, because, well, have pride. ...

Have also made cranberry sauce. Told Mom about it. "Is it good?" she asked. It's cranberries, an orange, port, and honey. What could be bad about it? Also zested the orange, for use in the parsnips. ...

It's 3:19 now, and there's a glass of port in the living room calling to me in a quiet and syrupy way. "Wendy!" it calls. "Wendy! Time to relax for five minutes."

3:20 PM, and still no bra. ...

My cranberry sauce is too tart on its own, but is lovely in company with everything else, and a gravy packet is heresy, but if you use 1 cup water and 1/4 cup port instead of 1 1/4 cup water? The heresy tastes like heaven.

It's cranberries, an orange, port, and honey. Let's write it up a bit more, then.

Cranberry Sauce With Port

1 bag fresh cranberries
1 orange (zested, with zest removed for other side dish use)
1 cup tawny port
several tablespoons honey, to taste

Open cranberries, and wash in a colander. Get rid of any unsavory berries. In all my years of doing this, I've never had a truly unsavory berry pop up, but better safe than sorry. Peel and chop the orange. You can supreme it if you want, or if you have a chefly husband about who needs something to do with his hands and knives and time. Put fruit into a heavy sauce pan, add port and two tablespoons honey, and bring to a simmer. Simmer, uncovered, until most of the berries have burst and the sauce is starting to thicken. Dip a tasting spoon in the sauce, take out, let cool, and then taste to see if the sauce needs more sugar. Seriously, let the sauce on the tasting spoon cool. You don't need a burnt tongue to make Thanksgiving happy. Add more honey if you want, or don't. Take off heat, pour into the dish you'll serve the sauce from, cover with cling film, and pop it in the fridge to cool and set up some.

Great on Thanksgiving. Great on sandwiches (turkey, or peanut butter, or ham, or cheese...). Tasty tasty stuff.

This year's berries may well have ginger in them, too, because the ginger looked nice at the grocery store last night.

Happy Thanksgiving, folks.