Kind of late to the party here, but...there are so many citrus varieties out there now that it's actually kind of hard to get doctrinaire about them. Here in South Africa, we get naartjies, which are distinguished in the shops from clementines and mandarins and satsuma. But, damn, they're good!

My best for them is a milk sherbet. 1 1/2 t zest, mixed with 1 1/2c sugar, add 1/4c lemon juice, 1 1/2 c naartjie juice and dissolve the sugar, then add 4c milk and freeze in your favorite ice cream maker. Simple, pretty healthy and really delicious.

Wait wait wait. Doesn't grave go the other way?

lots of ways to "skin a cat." how do you use the character map, pierino?

Or you could just use the character map which is loaded in your Windows software, if you are on that platform, for the "grave" over e as in é. I have a friend with an é in her name so I know how to do this.

Thank, hardlikearmour. Useful reminder. I'm always forgetting those keys, so if I'm posting something with a lot of foreign words, I type it in Word and then cut and paste. You'd think that typing it in Word would give me a chance to fix all my typos and errors, but somehow, it doesn't.

é = hold down alt key and type 130 on number pad
è = alt key + 138
ê = alt key + 136
ë = alt key + 137
(Google ASCII symbols)

Bene, and grazie pierino! Ruby Heartstealer? Ruby e la giovane ragazza qui e una "conoscente" di Berlusconi. Si? (Not sure how to get accent mark over the e...)

lol, pierino, i have to guess Berlusconi's "paramour"

By request here is the orange/prosecco sorbet recipe http://www.food52.com/recipes/9579_ruby_heartstealer_valentine_sorbet
Extra points if you can guess the origin of the title. At some point I'll add a photo, but not now.

Thanks for asking this, mrslarkin! I never knew that I actually wanted to know the difference!

Just happens that Sunset magazine has a story on growing citrus this month, including some intriguing varieties: http://www.sunset.com/garden/fruits-veggies/citrus-gardening-00418000070419/.

Happy to share, but not this minute. You will need an ice cream maker for the sorbet. It's not complicated but there are some tricks involved---as I've discovered.
Back to the main topic, flavorwise you can follow a citrus trail here but the mandarins I just used are in terms of texture and rind quite a bit different from clementines, which I happen to really like. I also made a similar sorbet using blood oranges which were really late coming into season. But they are out there now.

pierino- your advice and recipes are always wonderful.i agree with chezsuzanne- is this a recipe you are willing to share??

??? Someone, post a family tree!! I've read that tangerines are a subset of mandarins. I've also read that they're the same thing. I've thought that clementines, satsumas, kishus, etc. were all mandarins. And yes, yes, there was a time that I thought that mandarins came in a can, but I've been over that for a long time. Now pierino tells me that mandarins are like juice oranges, but I can't really see that at all. I'm sinking into a pickle.

Hey pierino - your sorbet sounds so refreshingly great! Any chance you might post your recipe?

Close in flavor but not in useage. A clementine is closer to a tangerine, as in the rind. But mandarins are more like a juice orange. In fact this past weekend I had to prepare a mandarin/prosecco sorbet for a crowd of just over thirty.

AH, where is that line between tangerine, mandarin, clementine, and orange? In my kitchen they are interchangeable. Zest is best when freshest. Nothing beats Meyer lemon right off the tree!

Thanks! Thinking about using the zest in a baked good, yes.

Clementine is a type of mandarin. Are you using them in a recipe?