 |
| 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!
No comments:
Post a Comment