Vicki’s Orange Sorbet
August in Wellington is always a highlight with a month long food festival ‘Wellington on a Plate’. This year is my best yet, a chance meeting at the Wellington Food Show enabled me to meet the vibrant and talented Vicki Young.
Vicki is a self taught talent in pastry brilliance. Her festival event was everything WOAP is all about. Exploring new ideas, celebrating culinary talent and the exceptional ingredients we have on our doorstep. ‘In time and place’ was a 2 year in the making collaboration between @VickiEats and @Kris.dpd.
The focus – exploring the concepts of place from the familiar to the great unknown over 4 courses of dessert with imagery and sound. Vicki used the Thermomix® to create some of the elements of her desserts such as sorbet, chocolate mousse and custard. Mr C and I were invited to the intimate rehearsal dinner. We joined 10 other guests travelling from the Sea, Mountains, Moon and Mars all in the course of one magical evening.
It’s hard to decide on a favourite element. We tasted burnt marshmellow custard encased in charcoal and white chocolate, jellytip inspired chocolate mousse mountain ranges and freeze dried olive oil snow.
Vicki’s been generous and shared her orange sorbet recipe with us. If you want Spring to arrive immediately, I assure you a mouthful of this will take you right there!
Ingredients
- 1500g (NZ navel) oranges
- 400g white sugar
- 400g water
- 25g lemon juice, peel saved for sugar syrup
Instructions
- Zest lemon and set lemon aside. Put lemon zest into mixing bowl and add water and sugar and cook 15 minutes/100degrees/speed 3 or until sugar is melted. Put aside to cool
- Slice oranges into even slices and pour boiling hot water over them. Drain the water and repeat this process twice more, to remove bitterness from the pith/skin.
- Blitz oranges in thermo – if oranges are hot, it will create a vacuum so you’ll need to stop and mix it every so often! Best to cool until just warm before blitzing.
- Pass oranges through a fine sieve, collecting whatever is left for sorbet… this is the time consuming part!
- Measure 500 grams of orange pulp into the mixing bowl.
- Add 750 grams sugar syrup to the mixing bowl and then add fresh lemon juice, quick mix 5 sec/speed 10
- Pour sorbet into 2-4 containers and freeze overnight (top tip: easier divided in more containers as mixture will be easier to process)
- Rough chop frozen blocks into pieces and blitz in thermo 30 sec/speed 9, then mix 30 sec/speed 4 until desired consistency, you may need to chill again before serving. Best enjoyed freshly blitzed on a warm Welly spring!
Hints & Tips
Orange pulp left over can be repurposed into an almond orange cake to avoid waste (recipe incoming!). Any leftover sugar syrup and lemon juice can be saved to pour over your warm baked cake…