Someone made the mistake of lending me an electronic ice cream machine. Silly person. They may never see it again! I have gone sorbet crazy. Yes, it is winter here. Yeah, I?m cold a lot. But yes, damn it, I want some sorbet. That?s just how we culinary rebels roll. There have been an abundance of mandarin and passion fruit at the Central Market local sellers, so I grabbed a crap ton of them and got to work on my sorbet fix.
When it comes to making sorbets, you can either use fruit puree/juice and sugar, or fruit puree with a sugar syrup (equal parts water and sugar, simmered for 15 minutes together). I prefer the latter because I think I creates a better consistency. I also like using a bit of hard liquor in my sorbet base, because it keeps it from freezing completely solid into a rock. For blueberry I would use Stoli Rasberry Vodka, for passion fruit, I used rum. For the mandarin, I used nothing, and now have the biggest most useless popsicle rock in the world living in my freezer.
For the passion fruit, I looked for ones that felt heavier than the rest. The produce lady explained to me that the heavier they are, the more juice and pulp are in them. I sliced them open, scooped out the pulp and seeds and threw away the outside.
Then I made a simple syrup by simmering 1 cup of water and 1 cup of sugar together with the passion fruit pulp for fifteen minutes. The flavor was a bit off to me?it was tart but not sweet enough.
So I picked up a can of passion fruit in syrup from the store. I?m not sure if they sell this in the States (your best bet is checking any Mexican grocery store), but it?s a decent product. On its own, its too sweet for me. But with the fresh passion fruit, it mellowed out the flavors and helped them combine better. A splash or two of rum and I was ready.
I let the base cool off in the fridge for several hours. The colder it is, the faster it will churn. Then I left my machine warm up and threw it in. Ten minutes later, I had this mess of sexy passion fruit sorbet.
I kid you not, it is like sex on a spoon, people. It is tart, sweet, rich and melts down your throat. It rocks. And now I?m working on my fourth batch. ~LTG
