Red Wine Macerated Winter Fruit Food

RED-WINE-MACERATED PEACHES, BERRIES, AND ORANGES

Steps:

• In a small saucepan, combine red wine, brown sugar, and star anise and bring to a boil over medium-high. Reduce heat and simmer until thickened, about 10 minutes (you should have 1 cup).
• Arrange fruit in a 1 1/2-quart shallow dish. Discard star anise from wine mixture, then pour over fruit. Let sit at room temperature until fruit is thawed, about 1 hour.

PRUNES IN RED WINE

Steps:

• Combine wine, orange peel, peppercorns, cloves, cinnamon sticks and allspice in a 2-quart saucepan. Bring to a simmer. Stir in sugar. Simmer 10 minutes. Add prunes, simmer 10 minutes more. Remove from heat. Stir in triple sec.
• Transfer to a bowl, cover and set aside up to 3 hours before serving, turning prunes in wine syrup from time to time. Strain, reserving syrup in a bowl. Return prunes to syrup and discard spices. Serve at once, with a dollop of cream if desired, or refrigerate until ready to serve.

MACERATED BERRIES

Steps:

• In a medium bowl, combine the berries and limoncello. Sprinkle the sugar over the berries and stir until the sugar dissolves. Stir in the mint.;

MACERATED STRAWBERRIES

Steps:

• In a bowl combine all ingredients. Let stand in refrigerator for 2 hours.

RED WINE-MACERATED WINTER FRUIT

Steps:

• Remove zest from lemon with a vegetable peeler and squeeze juice from lemon. In a saucepan bring water to a boil with zest, lemon juice, wine, sugar, and cinnamon stick, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Simmer mixture 15 minutes.
• While mixture is simmering, peel and core pineapple and cut into bite-size pieces. Halve figs if using. Pour hot syrup through a sieve into a bowl. Stir pineapple and dried fruit into syrup and cool. Chill fruit, covered, at least 8 hours and up to 2 days.
• Serve fruit with mascarpone or crème fraîche and biscotti.