Little tangerine, lime and yuzu sorbets

Serves 6-8 Desserts and puddings

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Method

Scrub the fruit in warm soapy water, to remove any wax etc, rinse and dry. Use a sharp potato peeler to remove the zest from the limes without the bitter white pith and put into a non-reactive saucepan (ie non-stick, stainless steel or enamel). Squeeze out the juice and reserve for later.

Add 625ml water and the sugar to the pan and bring slowly to the boil, then boil rapidly for 3-4 minutes to reduce the liquid a little – it should feel slippery if rubbed between your thumb and forefinger. Remove from the heat and allow to cool. When cold, strain into a bowl and add the reserved lime juice.

Meanwhile cut the top third off each tangerine and scoop the flesh out into a sieve over a bowl. Press the juice out with the back of a ladle and add this to the cooled lime syrup. Chill until very cold (overnight, ideally, as this will speed up the freezing).

Set the tangerine shells and lids on a freezeproof tray and put in the freezer until hard. Just before freezing/churning the sorbet, add 1tsp of yuzu juice, taste, then add more if it needs it. It can be quite strong, so it’s better to be careful.

To freeze the sorbet, pre-cool the ice-cream machine, then pour in the liquid. Leave to churn for around 20 minutes, or until the sorbet is firm enough to scoop.

Pile into the frozen tangerine shells, sit in a chilled freezeproof box with a lid and place in the freezer. To store as a plain sorbet, quickly scrape into a chilled plastic freezer box. Cover with cling film pressed onto the surface, then snap on a lid. Label and freeze. Allow 10-15 minutes to chill to soften a bit before serving. The sorbet will lose its freshness if stored for too long – maximum
1 week. Serve with a pile of finger lime pearls under the ‘hats’ and decorate with a bay leaf.

NOTE: This can be frozen and ‘forked’ into shards in a shallow tray like a granita if you don’t have an ice-cream machine.