A seasonal pink drink: Pomgrané

My last efforts at creating some interesting after-dinner drinks left me with some alcohol left over, so I put my mind to what fruit might be in season and appropriate for another experiment.

As is usually the way, within 5 minutes of having begun this zen-like contemplation my father-in-law walked in to say he'd just got back from seeing a nephew who, as well as helping him out with his computer, was covering a mound of pomegranate seeds with sugar and grappa in a large jar.

Pomegranate pips, fresh from the fruit and ready to soak'n'shake

So there was my next fruit. Turning to the trusty Liquori Casalinghi ("Housewives' Liqueurs") I found a recipe for a digestivo made from melograno: Pomgrané.

Beautiful fruit bought from the local cooperative

The recipe called for a simple mix of pips, alcohol, sugar, water and some herbaceous leaves. Not knowing quite which plants they came from (or how much a difference a few leaves would make if I found them) and wanting to dilute the alcohol a little with something a bit, well... botanical, I adapted the recipe to include the remains of a bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin instead of some of the 95º alcohol.

Pipping the melograni and getting the ingredients together

Here's my adapted recipe:

Ingredients:

400g (approx) Pomegranate pips
100ml Bombay Sapphire gin
200ml 95º alcohol
300ml water
150g sugar

I found that 4 beautiful, ripe and ready fruit weighing about 1.5 kilos gave me enough pips.

Put all the ingredients into a 1 litre jar.
Leave for 1 month, shaking regularly.
Filter, bottle and leave for 5 months before drinking.

All the ingredients just added to the jar and freshly shaken.
(As I type 3 days later it's taken on a vivid pink hue and the pips are floating in suspension)

I imagine that cousin Gianni's grappa-based version will be sweeter and ready sooner, but my jar is already a vivid pink, the pips suspended and translucent. Can't wait till the six months are up!

Salute!

Miyagawacino and other experiments

I successfully made a couple of batches of limoncino earlier this year (the last of which is bound to disappear over the next couple of weeks) and when it was time to have another go, I made an interesting supermarket discovery: Miyagawa.

Miyagawa in my local supermarket 

Looking like clementines, only green, these fruit (also known as Mikawa) are a Japanese citrus but appear in Italian supermarkets at this time of year because they grow particularly well in Sicily. You could mistake them for fat limes and their taste isn't that far off: Tart but sweeter than a lime, similar to a mandarin crossed with a grapefruit.

Green on the outside... no pips, easy to peel and fantastic to eat 

Their season is early and short, so I thought that as well as trying a version of my limoncino recipe - Miyagawacino - I'd also experiment with a couple of other recipes from my 70's Liquori Casalinghi ("Housewives' Liqueurs"(!)) book.

Peeling the miyagawa by cutting them into eighths and then separating flesh from peel. 

The first of these was a take on triple-sec - Secagawa - using the juice of the fruit used to make the miyagawacino as well as some more of the green peel, cloves and cinnamon. Following a recipe from the book where the principal ingredient is supposed to be kumquats (mandarini cinesi), all of the ingredients were put in a 1 litre jar with 95º alcohol cut down with spring water and some sugar. This mixture will sit in the jar and get shaken every day for 6 months, before being filtered and left to mature in the bottle for another 5.

The resulting peel, once as much of the white pith has been shaved off as possible with a sharp knife 

I then followed a similar recipe for a drink that should have quite a different result. Mandotai secco is also based on kumquats, this time asking from them to be left whole when put in the jar with the other ingredients. Needing about 300g of fruit, I put three miyagawa into my Miyagawatai secco mix, along with the cinnamon, cloves, sugar and watered-down alcohol. This will get shaken from 5 months and then stay in the bottle for 6 (I love how randomly specific the recipes in Liquori Casalinghi are) and thus be ready on the same day as the Secagawa.

So September 2014 is should be a good month for after-dinner drinking round our house.

In goes the 95º alcohol 

Jars ready for shaking (l-r): Miyagawatai secco, Miyagawacino, Secagawa

But before then, the miyagawacino should be ready in about a month. Like last time, I'll shake it for a couple of weeks then filter and bottle, freezing it two weeks later. I'd like to cut the strength of it this time (the last batch of limoncino came in at over 40º) - so I'll be doubling the quantity of sugar syrup I add between filtering and bottling.


Salute!

Making Limoncino

Back in January I was given a family recipe and soon afterwards I had my first go at making limoncino, the classic and very refreshing Italian after-dinner tipple. If you’ve holidayed in Sorrento (or shopped in Waitrose) then you probably sampled limoncello - and this is the same drink. A family Uncle, Zio Mario, assures me that limoncino is simply the Northern Italian name and it’s his recipe I followed: Limoncino alla Mario

Working instructions for Limoncino alla Mario

The bottom shelf
The first step was to buy a short list of ingredients: alcohol, lemons and sugar. In Italian supermarkets you can pick up a bottle a ‘pure’ alcohol for a few euros. And they’re usually nested on the bottom shelf of the booze section - probably because the bottles are a bit simple and ugly-looking. Or habitual purchasers are already on the floor. This is a surprising and delightful discovery for someone from the UK, where I’m sure you won’t find find anything so flammable or inviting to winos anytime soon.

95º vol. on the bottom shelf

So, having picked up a litre of 95º vol. clear liquor, I headed for the fruit & veg...
...to find there weren’t any lemons. 

Uh-oh...

Did they hear I was coming? As I stood there muttering to myself I heard a polite cough behind me. I hopped out of the way clumsily as a whole fresh batch of lovely lemons was wheeled into place. Fresh, organic lemons make really good limoncino - because its the taught, oily skin that you use to infuse the alcohol.

Fresh organic lemons in my local supermarket

Mario’s recipe called for 13 good-sized lemons, which I duly plucked from the pile. Tempted as I was by the promise of 'Sadam' granulated sugar, a kilo of brown organic zucchero di cana completed my shopping list.

Sadam in your tea, anyone?

Zesting the lemons
The first part of the process involves getting all the yellow zest off the lemons. I had a few options for doing this, but guessing that the more of the zest I could infuse in the alcohol the better, I opted for removing the skin from sections of the fruit and then trying to ‘shave’ the white, bitter pith off the inside of each piece.

All you need for some bottles of the good stuff

This proved time-consuming but very successful. My goal was to have as much of the yellow and as little of the white as possible and this certainly did the trick. (I’ve since made another batch of limoncino by zesting the lemons with a simple zesting tool which resulted in half as much yellow peel and nowhere near as good results).

Separating the white pith from the yellow peel

Having scrubbed them in bicarbonate of soda and warm water, my strategy was to first cut the lemons into eighths and then peel the skin away from the fruit. With fresh, firm lemons this was pretty easy. I then used a small, sharp knife to cut into each section of skin and separate the white from the yellow, shaving any remaining bits of white from each section with another pass of the knife.

Shaving the peel took time but was worth it

The end result: fruit, pith and peel separated

Happy with how this turned out, all that remained was to tip the lemon peel into a large, sterilised kilner jar and cover it with the litre of alcohol. The instructions said to leave it for 10 days, shaking the jar every day. 

Peel and alcohol in the kilner jar

Do the Lemon Shake...
After about a week of pretty enthusiastic daily (sometimes twice-daily) shaking, I noticed the liquor was taking on a lovely golden colour. Wanting my first batch to be a lemony as possible, I kept up the shaking for a couple of weeks.

Starting to go golden after a week's happy shaking

Sweet enough
The next stage of the process involves making a sugar syrup to add to the lemon-infused alcohol. Uncle M had, confusingly, written 500g of sugar in the ingredients list, over-written this with 600g and then put 700g in the instructions(!). I decided to go for 500g, not wanting my limoncino too sweet (and thinking that half as much sugar as alcohol sounded like the kind of recipe that was easy to remember and pass on).

I put the sugar into a pan with a litre of water, brought it slowly up to boil then left it to cool completely.

Infused alcohol and syrup ready to mix and bottle

I poured off the alcohol, which was by now sunset-yellow; the peel noticeably paler and brittle. I cleaned out the kilner jar and - in tandem with a large pouring bowl - used it to combine the two liquids, pouring back and forth through a pair of fine sieves to catch any sediment. (I’d first tried placing coffee filters over the sieves to try to catch the finer sediment, but the limoncino wasn’t having any of it. Since then I’ve bought medical gauze which has worked out much better.)

When the syrup first met the liquor the resulting liquid turned creamy and opaque, similar in appearance to lemon curd. I’m not sure if this was the result of using unrefined sugar, so much peel or the presence of finer sediment but I liked it just the same.

Once I was happy it had been sieved enough, I decanted the limoncino into bottles.

Mario’s instructions stated it should be left in the bottle for at least 15 days before serving ice cold.

My first limoncino, decanted into some old grappa bottles
and ready to freeze

After a couple of days, there was a noticeable amount of sediment at the top of each bottle. I worried about it for a short while, trying to skim or re-filter the darker matter from the top of each bottle, but after shaking the bottles and putting them in the freezer it didn’t seem to alter the appearance or quality of the resulting drink.

Sediment at the top after a couple of days settling in the bottle

After the 15 days were up, I popped the bottles in the freezer in anticipation of the first excuse to try my debut batch of limoncino!

The taste test
We tried the limoncini together - a bottle from Mario and one of mine - after a long, satisfying Easter lunch. I was interested in seeing how mine stood up, not least because Mario’s only additional advice had been: “If it doesn’t turn out like mine, you’ve done it wrong!”.

Straight from the freezer you could see the difference. Mario’s was clearer than my creamy version and this was even starker when they were poured into their glasses. This surprised me as I’d assumed that there’d be more dissolved sugar in his version so it ought to be cloudier. 

Easter Day: Colomba, Valpolicella, Franciacorta...
...and the limoncino taste test

On tasting, we all agreed that they both tasted authentic (and much better then the normal complementary glass you’d get in a trattoria), though mine had a more intense lemon flavour and thus seemed less ‘alcoholic’. (Of course, they were both rocket fuel when compared to shop-bought equivalents, which tend to level out at about 25º vol.) I reckon my obsessiveness with getting all the yellow peel - Mario must be so over that by now - made the difference. (Certainly, a more recent batch where I used a zester instead of a knife - mentioned above - yielded a result much closer to his version)

Mario's (left) is much clearer than mine

The difference in opacity made even clearer from above

In conclusion, I was really happy with the results and will definitely follow this method again.
Which is as much as I’ve said to Mario... :-)

Salute!