This is my new hobby. It started with my mint plant. I was browsing the internet for things I could cook with mint, and happened on some sorbet recipes. It's amazingly simple. Water, sugar (lots of sugar!), fruit juice or puree. Some recipes tell you to fold in stiffly beaten egg whites to add air and improve the texture, but it's not really necessary.
If you're doing it without an ice cream maker, you just put it in a metal container in the freezer, wait for it to partially freeze, take it out, mash it up with a fork, put it back, wait another hour, mash it up again, put it back, and so on. The more times you stir it, the more air you work in, and the softer the sorbet. It still turns out more snow-cone like than ice-cream like, but I'm not complaining. It's better than anything I've had from a store.
The sugar content affects the texture too. Once I put too little in, and ended up with a gigantic inedible block of ice. I don't like my sorbet so sweet, so I counterbalance the sugar with copious amounts of lemon juice.
This time I got it right. It's lychee, mango and lemon. And I could eat a bucket of it.
Here's the approximate recipe.
2.5 cups water
10 tablespoons white sugar
Juice of 2 lemons, remove the seeds (Sour! Use less if you want!)
Bit of lemon zest
Flesh of 2 small mangoes, blenderized
About 25 lychees, skinned, de-pitted, blenderized
Boil sugar and water together to make syrup. Let cool.
Pour into metal container. Cake tin will do.
Stir in lemon juice, fruit puree
Put in freezer for a couple of hours.
Take out, mash, put back, wait an hour... etc.
Takes about 5 or 6 hours until completely frozen.
7 comments:
Yum, that sounds delicious!!! Ah, but it isn't so easy to get fresh lychee here.
Maybe I should send you an ice-cream machine?
I'm sure you could substitute the lychee with some other fruit. I don't remember though, are you allergic to mangoes? I'm going to try making an orange sorbet today, I'll let you know how that turns out.
We're freezing orange sherbet now. Next I wanna try Guava sherbet, and then cherry sherbet, and then peach sherbet, and then...
It definitely sounds like you need an ice cream maker!
Sounds and looks delicious! I definitely need to try this recipe because I just got a mint plant for my birthday [but not using fresh mangoes or lychee since I'm allergic. Canned okay?]. Thanks for sharing, Kea! Got anymore ideas for mint?
I ended up preferring sorbet without the mint flavour, but if you want to add mint to it, just put some mint leaves in the just-boiled syrup for about 10 minutes and then fish them out. You may need to repeat the process a couple of times to get enough mint flavour in.
Canned lychees should work fine, but I've never tried it. It's pretty hard to mess up a sorbet recipe.
Oooh...lychee and mangoes...my favorite fruits!
You could try mint with jasmine tea...or lavender. Those would make interesting sorbets. Or, you can always drink the mint as tea, just crush it a little and add hot water. Since it's summer, you can put ice cubes in and add some simple syrup if you like it sweet. Add lemon for a twist on the traditional lemonade.
Other things to do with mint - roast a chicken, make chutney, and of course, my favorite, mojitos!
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