NOTES FROM THE TEST KITCHEN - JANUARY EDITION
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
Welcome back everyone!
We hope you all had a great holiday season. As is the case for many after the holidays, we are feeling a bit sluggish and in need of some light, refreshing sorbetti to counteract all the heavy meals, overeating, and indulgences of the holidays.
We have created two variations on some familiar sorbetti to make them extra tasty and good for you. The first is a zingy Lemon-Ginger sorbetto; our traditional lemon sorbetto has been enhanced with lemon zest and a hunk of grated fresh ginger to give it a bright yet spicy flavour. The exciting heat from the ginger keeps building while you eat it. Feel free to reduce or increase the amount of ginger in the recipe to suit your individual tastes.
Ginger has long been used, not only as a spice, but as a sort of medicine in various cultures to help aid digestion and treat many gastrointestinal issues. It has also been thought to "help treat the common cold, flu-like symptoms, [and] headaches"(1) thus making ginger the perfect spice to use at this time of year when colds and flus are more common.
The second sorbetto uses two of the most well known and powerful antioxidants in the world; the Pomegranate and the Acai berry. This sorbetto is made with a mix of a Pomegranate and Acai juice and enhanced with PreGel's Pomegranate Fortefrutto. It is very refreshing, explodes with a deep, rich, berry-like flavour and will add a gorgeous purple colour to your display case.
The Acai berry is now being touted as the best of the "super foods" due to the fact that it has the "highest antioxidant property of any fruit on earth...[and is] packed with healthy fatty acids, vitamins and minerals"(2).
We hope that you enjoy these flavours as much as we do!
"THE POWER COUPLE" - ACAI-POMEGRANATE SORBETTO:.jpg "Pomegranate(2).jpg")
- 1100g Water
- 1650g Acai - Pomegranate Juice blend
- 40g Fibraplus
- 135g Fruit Base Milk Free
- 680g Sugar
- 70g Dextrose
- 80g Fortefrutto - Pomegranate
- 4g Vellutina
1) Weigh and mix all the dry ingredients together.
2) Add the wet ingredients, and blend together.
3) Batch as usual.
NB: Please take into account the sugar content of the juice blend you are using and reduce or increase the amount of sugar accordingly.
LEMON-GINGER SORBETTO:
- 1685g Water
- 610g Sugar
- 70g Dextrose
- 85g Lemon 50
- 25g Fibraplus
- 20g Fresh Lemon Juice + the zest of the lemon
- 50g Freshly grated ginger
- 4g Vellutina
1) Weigh and mix the dry ingredients.
2) Add the wet ingredients and blend.
3) Add the grated lemon zest and grated ginger and incorporate using a whisk.
4) Let sit for a half hour, if possible, to intensify the flavour of the ginger.
5) Batch as usual.
(1) University of Maryland Medical Centre, www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/ginger-000246.htm
(2) Acai Canada, www.acaicanada.com
