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!