Photo by David Bishop
It is gooseberry season and they are gorgeous. The farmer's markets abound with them. Our purveyor, Maggie Nesciur of Flying Fox Fruiterer, brought us glorious branches abundant with berries for us to photograph. She provides New York City's top restaurants and gourmet markets with freshly hand-harvested organic seasonal fruits and berries from small farms in Upstate New York. See also www.hungryghostfoodandtravel.com.
With the recent heat wave, I thought it appropriate to make gooseberry sorbet with this fabulously fragrant fruit. The farmer's market afforded three kinds of gooseberries: large spiny green orbs, tiny jewel-like opalescent pink pearls, and somewhat larger, lovely, deep-purple crested ovals.
I chose to make my sorbet with the tart and slightly floral tasting purple pints. I perused many gooseberry sorbet recipes. Most of them suggested cooking the berries in water and sugar, then straining all of the seeds, pulp and skin from them, rendering their juice. Some recipes even suggested letting that juice sit overnight refrigerated, to allow any sediment to settle to the bottom, achieving very clear juice on top to make the sorbet. Often the recipes for gooseberry sorbet included ginger, lime juice and elderflower, peach or pear liquors for added flavor. I found that the berries sweetened with sugar are amazing as is; seeds, pulp, bits of skin and all. I simply plucked off the stems and woody tips from four pints of purple gooseberries to ready them for my very berry sorbet.
- 4 pints plucked and washed purple gooseberries
- 1 1/4 cup granulated cane sugar
- Enough water to just cover the berries and sugar in a saucepan
In a lidded sauce pan, place the berries and sugar and just cover them with pure water. With the lid on, boil the berry mixture for a few minutes, stirring occasionally, until the berries pop and soften. Pour the mixture through a large size medium gauge wire strainer over a bowl large enough to hold the contents of the cooked berry mixture. With the back of a large spoon, push as much of the contents as possible through the strainer, scraping the back of the strainer when finished to maximize use of all the berry bits. This produces a little over 4 pints, or one liter of fruity juice.
At this point you can put the mixture right into an ice cream/sorbet maker, or for a smoother sorbet texture with more body, add gelatin into the base before freezing. I always add gelatin, especially when I am doing a photo shoot or in very hot weather to prevent the sorbet from melting.
- 2 packets of unflavored gelatin powder
- 3/4 cup very cold water
Pour the cold water into a 2 quart liquid measuring cup or bowl. In a small bowl, empty the contents of the 2 packets of gelatin. In one hand have ready a whisk or fork, in the other the bowl of powdered gelatin. Pour the gelatin all at once into the center of the bowl of cold water and immediately whisk it into the water to prevent lumps. Let the particles of gelatin plump for about 5 minutes. Pour the hot gooseberry juice mixture into the plumped gelatin and stir until it is completely dissolved, scraping the sides as you go so that no undissolved gelatin sticks to the sides of the bowl. It takes a few minutes.
Add the mixture to an ice cream/sorbet maker for 20 -30 minutes, depending on the machine and whether you have allowed the sorbet base to cool. After it becomes uniformly soft-serve like, frozenly aerated, pour it into a plastic lidded container and place it in the freezer for 4 -6 hours before scooping this vibrantly delicious, fragrantly refreshing, tangy and sweet, pink-purple gooseberry sorbet.
I love the look of the raspberry-like seeds in the scoops. The pulp gives an exotic visual and textural quality, while the gelatin lends silky smoothness on the tongue. I like to serve it with complementary wafer-thin ginger crisps.
Also check out my first blog at www.foodfloozie.com and my professional website at www.marilinda.com.