May 23, 2011
Intermède
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granité de citron « Meyer »
(Meyer-lemon ice)
I first became intrigued with fruit syrups when I started reading 19th- and early 20th-century French cookbooks. It seemed that every book included a number of recipes for the variety of fruit available in those days. Then one day, I was “blessed” with a couple of shopping bags full of Meyer lemons. I can only make so much lemon chutney, lemon marmalade, lemonade, pickled lemons, and lemon sorbet. So I looked for a recipe for lemon syrup. I decided that the one in the original Larousse Gastronomic from 1938 was perfect. It was a general recipe for syrups made from citrus juice and was super simple and quick. All I needed was juice, sugar, and water. (Most syrups are just juice and sugar, but the acid in the lemon juice needs to be diluted.) Everything was mixed together in a saucepan and brought to a boil. It only needed to boil the mixture long enough to completely dissolve the sugar. I bottled it hot in bale-top bottles so it would be shelf stable. The only thing left was to congratulate myself on having another lemon product on my ingredient shelf.
I soon tired of lemon sodas and decided to find other uses for the lemon syrup. I decided to make an Italian ice, what the French refer to as a granité. After a few minutes of research on the Internet, I found that the machines that make the ice automatically will freeze-up and jam if the sugar concentration is 13% or less and the syrup won’t freeze solid enough if the concentration is above 30%. With some quick arithmetic, I determined that my lemon syrup was about 60% sugar, including the 3% natural sugar in the juice. So I diluted the syrup with water to bring it to about 30%. It still wasn’t quite hard enough after 24 hours in my freezer set at -23 °C (-10 °F), so I added a bit more water. With a little trial and error, the texture was perfect. Not totally hard, but full of nice crystals of flavored ice. Please note, I do not scrape the ice as it is forming with a fork or spoon as many recipes instruct.
To serve the ice, I use a small, 2.8-cm (about 1-in) diameter scoop to scrape the ice into a ball and place it in a 30-ml (1-oz) shot glass. Each glass is placed on a plate or saucer along with a demi-tasse spoon, and presented to a guest. In my house, the ice melts fast so having reliable help in the serving department is important.
The first time I served the Meyer-lemon ice to guests was at a party for five of my fellow cooking instructors and their partners. They all declared the ice a success. Since then I’ve also made ice from watermelon juice and onion juice.
One day, my local produce vender had a quarter of a watermelon on sale for next to nothing, so I bought it. (I actually don’t eat watermelon, but I wanted the juice.) To juice it, I placed the pink flesh, minus the seeds, in a high-powered blender and pureed it well. The puree was then placed in a funnel with a coffee filter and set in the refrigerator to drain overnight. The resulting juice was clear and barely pink with a strong melon flavor. I added the sugar, and dissolved it with an immersion blender instead of heat. I managed to hit the right sugar concentration, which was about 25%, on the first try. That quarter of a melon made lots of juice and I’m still serving granité de pastèque nine months after making it.
The onion juice ice came about after reading about a caramelized onion syrup on the Playing with Fire and Water blog. I juiced a number of yellow onions in a centrifugal juicer. I then boiled the juice until the pyruvic acid had boiled off and the sharp flavor was gone. Sugar was then added to bring the concentration to about 25%, and the mixture frozen. I wouldn’t want a large dish of this onion ice, but a tablespoonful after a main course is refreshing. It’s also a great surprise for my guests.

© 2011 Peter Hertzmann. All rights reserved.