Valentine's Day

Ruby Heart-Stealer Valentine Sorbet

by:
February 17, 2011
4
2 Ratings
  • Serves 8 I hope
Author Notes

I love blood oranges with their mild raspberry –like flavor when they are in season. The sparkling wine adds a slightly crisp back note, and you can use prosecco, cava, or freixenet to your own pleasing. The blood oranges give you a little cupid blush. You will need an Ice cream maker for this. I use a Cuisinart model with a maximum capacity of 1 ½ quarts. I prepared this sorbet for a Valentine’s dinner for 30 people with an alternate mandarin sorbet. It’s tricky because once it is finished you need to serve it right away or else you must stick it in the freezer quickly. It will begin to get watery almost immediately. A bit of a freeze is kind of the trick and it does hold well for a day or so. Scrape up any frozen bits on the bottom and work them back in before serving. I’ve treated this as a palate cleanser after a spicy main course like gumbo. —pierino

What You'll Need
Ingredients
  • 2 cups blood orange juice, or mandarin or red grapefruit or your choice
  • 1 cup prosecco
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 cup water
  • Pinch of salt
Directions
  1. Prepare a simple syrup mixture with water and sugar. And it is simple; combine water and sugar and heat to just before it boils. Stir until all of the sugar is dissolved. Set aside
  2. Juice as many oranges as it takes you arrive at two cups of juice. Depends on the juicyness of the orange variety. Push that through a fine mesh strainer so that any residual seed or pulp material is captured and discarded
  3. Whisk the juice into the syrup along with that little bit of salt. Stir in the prosecco
  4. Chill covered in the refrigerator for two to three hours
  5. From this point you will need to follow the instructions for your ice cream maker. Mine requires that you freeze the container ahead and then, while the machine is running pour the sorbet mixture in. Let it run for twenty minutes until it looks like sorbet
  6. Freeze if not using at once
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Standup commis flâneur, and food historian. Pierino's background is in Italian and Spanish cooking but of late he's focused on frozen desserts. He is now finishing his cookbook, MALAVIDA! Can it get worse? Yes, it can. Visit the Malavida Brass Knuckle cooking page at Facebook and your posts are welcome there.

3 Reviews

Greenstuff February 17, 2011
Absolutely great! I discovered sorbets made with sparkling wine this summer, when I made a David Lebovitz raspberry-Champagne sorbet. I'm no dummy--I used something less pricy than Champagne--but I couldn't get over how light and wonderful it was. Raspberry was great for summer, blood orange sounds perfect for February.
 
TheWimpyVegetarian February 17, 2011
Hey-thanks so much for posting this, pierino. I love to make sorbet and when you mentioned this on foodpickle I knew I had to make it. I plan to make it this weekend!
 
hardlikearmour February 17, 2011
This sounds lovely! So light and fresh. I'm a huge fan of blood oranges. Thanks for sharing, pierino.