lebovitz's watermelon sorbet

 
It was a warm summer weekend in Sydney and given the beautiful, sunny weather it’s the right time to post my 2009 Food Challenge recipe for Sorbetto all’Anguria or watermelon sorbet.

It’s down in the food memory category because I have rich memories of eating scoops and scoops of watermelon sorbet during the spring I lived in Rome. As the city heated up, the watermelon sorbet was the perfect cooler and I devoured it in miraculous portions.

Even though I made the sorbet to eat at the end of a Vietnamese feast, it still brought back warm memories of Rome and the family I have now have there. I can’t wait to see them all again when I take Jonas (for his first time in Italy) in the first week of January.

It will be the middle of winter, so no sorbetto all’anguria, but there will be other delights to share.

Making this sorbet also knocked off another 2009 Food Challenge, to purchase David Lebovitz’s book of frozen delights The Perfect Scoop.

I am a big fan of David Lebovitz (like many bloggers out there). Not only do his posts contain cheeky insights into Parisian life, but his recipes are interesting, appetising and achieveable. When I had just started blogging more than three years ago, David was kind enough to leave an encouraging comment on one of my posts. I was thrilled.

Now I’m even more thrilled to have this cookbook. I couldn’t find it anywhere in Australia and was ridiculously jealous of bloggers in the US and Europe talking about it, so when Jonas and I were in the US in July I made sure I swung by Books A Million, or some such megastore, and grabbed myself a copy.

I have not been disappointed with the recipes nor their outcomes. The usual suspects are in there of course, but it’s flavours like Guinness-Milk Chocolate; Anise; Black Currant Tea; Saffron; Chartreuse; Goat Cheese; Rice; Sweet Potato & Maple and Eggnog that have me itching to try them.

So far I’ve made Watermelon Sorbet and Dark Chocolate and Roasted Banana ice creams.

In the pipeline are Roquefort & Honey, Peach, Salted Caramel and Passionfruit.

And that’s just the ice creams! I haven’t even touched on the sorbets, sherbets, granitas, sauces and toppings that this mighty book contains.

Basically, if you like ice cream, buy this book.

Sorbetto all’Anguria (Watermelon Sorbet)

Recipe from The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz. Makes 1 litre (1 quart).

Ingredients:
3 cups (750ml) watermelon juice
½ cup (100g) sugar
Big pinch of salt
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lime juice
1 – 2 tablespoons vodka (optional)

Method:

1. In a small, non-reactive pan heat ½ cup (125ml) of watermelon juice with the sugar and salt, stirring until sugar is dissolved.

2. Remove from heat and combine with the remaining watermelon juice, lime juice and vodka.

3. Chill thoroughly then churn in your ice cream machine according to the manufacturers instructions.

Tip: David says “I find that I get about 3 cups of watermelon juice from a 1.5kg (3lb) chunk of watermelon. Cut away the skin and rind then cube the flesh, remove seeds and puree in a blender or processor."

Note: David adds 1 to 2 tablespoons of tiny mini-sweet chocolate chips to the last minute of churning to give the appearance of watermelon seeds.