Champagne Currant Sorbet for a Princess

Friday morning, equals shopping and the local farmers market.

All the usual jollification’s and expletives exchanged and tempered with “We have a gift for you”.

A gift?

Yeah, we kept these for you, no one else knows what to do with them.

Ok, hardly the most endearing delivery but a lovely gesture!

Thank you’s, hugs and kisses were exchanged.

They looked like school tapioca, or frogspawn or maybe a cushion fabric from the 1970s.  Endearing? Well, not really they were not easy on the eye as you can see.

A weird and wonderful type of currant from an old walled garden from a nearby Castle of all things.

It’s a small Castle but a Castle none-the-less and that must surely make them taste better?

An elderly lady tapped my arm saying they are Champagne Currants pointing at the little currants masquerading as cushion fabric. Champagne Currants eh? Well, I never!

All of a sudden :- The ‘we kept these for you’ gained gravitas with my inner Princess.  Ones deportment and demeanor changed, with them carefully perched on the top of my basket,  much hilarity and gratitude exchanged.

I straightened my imaginary tiara, we chatted and giggled.  Standard stuff for we Champagne Princesses. Of course, I gave the dear soul one of the punnets. We chanced a glance to see if our shoes had changed into glass but – sadly, not this week.

Champagne Currant Sorbet.

Once washed and tasted, I found them to have a very gentle, light, sweet, floral flavor.  Nothing blousey, very faint and just lightly floral.

The white currants I have had before were not dissimilar to red in flavor.  These were more refined and needing to be eaten whilst wearing ‘diamonds and pearls’ and certainly not a hint of 1970s upholstery fabric about them! Tut Tut!

With that became an obvious target to become a sorbet,  and a little out of the ordinary.

Mutter, mutter, mutter, I must get rid of those ugly brown bits and stop frowning and growling at them. It wont help! Grr.

To make:

350 g  Champagne currants (with seeds and brown bits! Grr)

½ cup white fine caster sugar

1 tablespoon of glucose syrup

Juice of half a lemon

1 can Canada dry Ginger ale (it’s bubbly and looks like champagne in colour = near enough). You could use water,

To do:

Simmer the 350 g fruit and sugar with about ½ a cup of water for 8-10 mins.

Leave to cool in the pan.

Strain, and push pulp through sieve to retain brown bits and seeds!  Yay!

Resulting with a light fragrant syrup.  Add the lemon juice and 1 tablespoon of glucose syrup which will give a finer finish to the sorbet. Start to process in an ice cream machine and slowly add 1 can of icy cold Canada Dry or pale ginger ale. (Nothing hot and spiky)

Without an ice cream machine, I’d have used ice-cube bags. Freeze then blitz the cubes in a food processor or bash the daylights out of the sweet little icy cubes in a poly bag wrapped in (and on) a couple of cloths.

Sorbet then fit for a Princess.

Should you know these as white currants or any thing else for that matter.

Don’t tell me, don’t spoil it, I don’t want to know, fingers in my ears, la la la la la la la – Can’t hear you!

Please see attached: tantrum and tiara. Consider this recipe a rough guide if you are ever similarly gifted.  This recipe works with red currants, white currants and black currants too.

Enjoy x

 

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