February 5, 2009

Blood orange sorbet – the best sorbet you can ever have!


This is a magnificent recipe for an extremely refreshing sorbet. The blood orange – arancia rossa in Italian – has an attractive and unique red flesh. The color is a very intense ruby shade that reminds you of the color of blood (or red wine). The flavor is intense and tart but sweet at the same time: think of the sweetest freshly squeezed orange juice with a nice touch of grapefruit and raspberry juice!

In Italy, the arancie rosse are cultivated throughout Sicily, namely on the east side of the island in the provinces of Catania, Siracusa, Enna and Ragusa. There are three cultivars: tarocco, sanguinella (sangue means blood in Italian) and moro (the most intense in color). Blood oranges that come from these regions are regulated under the name arancia rossa di Sicilia. Arance rosse di Sicilia are without doubt the best you can have. However, they are impossible to find outside of Italy. Nowadays, the production of blood oranges has extended to places with nice Mediterranean weather, like New Zealand and… California! The Californian blood orange is not Sicilian, but it is actually pretty good. Although the trees grown in California come from Sicily, the fertility of the soil around Mount Etna and the Mediterranean sun are hard to compete with.

 Ingredients
2 cups blood orange juice, freshly squeezed
1/3 cup sugar
2 Tbsp Martini Rosso

Dissolve the sugar into the freshly squeezed blood orange juice. Pour the juice into your ice cream maker. After a couple of minutes, add the martini rosso and let the machine continue its work. Enjoy your blood orange sorbet right after it is ready! Usually sorbets don’t freeze well – or maybe they freeze too well – so it’s never a good idea to keep them in the freezer for a long time. The alcohol helps to break the ice crystals, and so does the sugar. However, homemade sorbets always have the best texture when they come right from the ice cream maker.

Tips

The tarocco cultivar is the orange with the highest content of vitamin C in the whole world!

Blood oranges go very well in cocktails and soft drinks! You surely have seen reddish Italian soda around. In Italy you can even have blood-orange flavored Fanta! It’s called Fanta Red Emotion (please read it trilling the R). And yes, Fanta is way better in Italy than in the US.

Watching tourists asking for an orange juice or spremuta d’arancia in Italy is a fun thing to do. The waiter comes proudly with freshly squeezed blood orange juice and the customer – looking at the color of the beverage being brought – thinks that the waiter didn’t understand what he really wants. What follows is a discussion in pseudo and unintelligible Italian on the part of the costumer (sometimes just in plain English – or whatever the costumer’s native language is). At the same time the discussion is held in an incomprehensible Italian-for-foreigners mixed with some words in pseudo English on the part of the waiter (usually lots of hand gestures included). OK, I’m stereotyping a bit but it really happens. And when this happens it’s so funny!
Posted by Daziano at 9:16 PM |  
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