Blueberry Lemon Sauce

Blueberries are in season and available at great prices right now.  I purchased a large basket of organic blueberries at a Natural foods grocery store.  We enjoyed the berries this week for breakfast with our cereal, added some with a green salad and still had a good amount of berries left. 

I wanted to preserve the berries before they started to get soft or moldy so I combined the berries with some lemon zest and juice and some organic sugar and came up with this versatile sauce recipe that we have used as a sauce on our smoked salmon and as a topping on single servings of vanilla ice cream for dessert. 

This sauce would also work well as a topping over French toast, waffles or pancakes.

Ingredients

2 cups            blueberries, remove stems,rinse, set aside

1/2 cup           organic sugar

1/2 cup           water

1 1/2 tbsp.      lemon juice and 3 strips of lemon peel 1″ x 2″ (no white pith)

1 tbsp.            cornstarch 

1 tbsp.            water (to mix with the cornstarch)

Direction

1.  Discard any under ripe small pinkish blueberries or overly ripe soft squishy blueberries.
2.  Rinse lemon and remove strips of lemon peel (1″ x 2″ pieces) from the yellow portion of the peel of 1/2 of a lemon.
3.  Add lemon peel and juice to a medium saucepan.
4.  Add blueberries and 1/2 cup of sugar and 1/2 cup of water to the saucepan.
5.  Heat the mixture for 5 – 10 minutes over medium heat, stirring as needed.
6.  Remove and discard the lemon peel.
7.  Combine cornstarch and 1 tbsp. of water, stir to make a slurry then add to the saucepan.
8.  Stir over medium/low heat for 2-3 minutes as the sauce thickens.
9.  Serve as desired.  Shave some lemon peel over the sauce just before serving.
10. Store leftovers in a covered dish in the fridge and use within a week.

My cookbook Small Kitchen Big Flavors! is available at a great Introductory Price on Ebay and my blog site at : http:/smallkitchenbigflavorsblog.wordpress.com