Our first sorbet « Made in France » had to be a typically French one. We therefore tried to make one with the famous plant that grows in our region: the “Verveineâ€.
This plant is normally used to make liqueur, or herbal teas, but you can sometimes be served one of these sorbets in a restaurant. Pour a few drops of liqueur on it, it’s wonderful!
Anyway, after hesitating between fresh and dried verveine, we opted for the dried one. Just like tea, the flavour of the plant seems to be best obtained with dried leaves infused in hot water.
We plunged two big handfuls of dried leaves into 500mL of very hot water and let it infuse for 10 minutes. In another pan, we prepared the sugar syrup, with 1 litre of water and 1 kg of sugar. Sweet! While bringing this to slow heat, we added 3 herbal tea bags to the liquid and let the whole infuse. Eventually, we mixed the two liquids, and added the juice of one big lemon.
I need to say that it was my father’s first ice cream party, and he enjoyed taking part in the cranking!
The cranking was really long, and I was a bit afraid of the result, but “thou shalt never doubt the power of the machine!†(Peter, 3:14)… First of all, the colour was amazing: from a pale yellow liquid, the mix turned into an immaculate white sorbet! And the flavour was intense, the acidity well balanced. We enjoyed this ice cream by the fireplace, with my father… A quiet and enjoyable moment! The next step is to serve this with lentil biscuits!
Note: we have to say that, working without a saccharometer, the result was a bit too sweet; but we did another batch the day after, with only 750g of sugar, and this time the result was purely perfect!
Leave a Reply