A bright, luminous purée made from whole citrus. It’s full of tangy juice and the essential oils contained within the citrus peel. It can be made from any kind of citrus fruit, but is best when you select ones with mild peels, to avoid bitterness.
To use the gel, I scrape it into a plastic piping bag, then snip the end of the bag away to create a nozzle about 2 mm wide. I like to then squeeze it in wiggly lines over Lemon Verbena (this page) or Carrot Seed ice cream (this page), adding a citrusy ripple through them.
500 g/1 lb kumquats, mandaquats, or Meyer lemons
250 g/1¼ cups sugar
150 ml/⅔ cup water
1. Rinse the citrus, then chop into halves (kumquats), quarters (mandaquats), or eighths (Meyer lemons).
2. Put the citrus, sugar, and water into a medium pan and cook over low heat with a lid on, stirring occasionally, until the peels are soft and tender, about 25 minutes.
3. Pour the mix into a blender or use an immersion blender to liquidize the fruit and juices for 3 minutes, or until very smooth.
4. Scrape the purée into a fine-mesh sieve or chinois and, using the back of a small ladle, push it through to extract the perfectly smooth gel-like purée.
5. Allow this mix to cool before transferring it to a plastic piping bag and squeeze out the air before sealing the open end with a clip or elastic band. Put the bag of mix into the fridge until well chilled.
6. This gel should last for a week in the fridge; otherwise I freeze mine and defrost it by sitting the piping bag in a bowl of cold water at room temperature for an hour.
At last, a way to use up (2!) egg whites after all that ice cream making.
If you haven’t tried making this before, I strongly encourage you to do so. The splintering shards of delicious nougat soften into a kind of honey chewing gum as you eat it—it’s completely addictive. This recipe makes quite a large amount but it’s hard to control the temperatures if you make the quantities any smaller. Fear not: it’s unlikely anybody is going to complain about a slab of homemade nougat for Christmas.
I love this made with candied citron, pink grapefruit, or figs and like to sprinkle chunks of it through Damson and Grappa choc ices (see this page and photograph on this page).
500 g/1 lb whole almonds
6 sheets of rice paper
120 ml/½ cup water
380 g/2 cups superfine sugar
180 ml/½ cup glucose syrup
250 ml/¾ cup honey
2 egg whites
Pinch of cream of tartar
200 g/1½ cups chopped candied peel
1. Preheat the oven to 350°F.
2. Roast the almonds until pale golden and crunchy, about 20 minutes. Wrap them up in a dish towel to keep them warm.
3. Lay out three sheets of the rice paper on a clean, even surface.
4. Heat the water, sugar, and glucose syrup together in a small pan and stir until the sugar dissolves. Bring to a gentle boil and start to heat the syrup to 150°C/300°F. Bring the honey to a simmer in a second small pan, and heat it to 135°C/275°F (this should take about 10 minutes).
5. A few minutes before the honey reaches temperature, beat the egg whites and cream of tartar together to form soft peaks.
6. Pour the boiling honey onto the egg whites and continue to beat them until combined and shiny. Follow this with the boiling sugar syrup (which will take 15 to 20 minutes to reach 150°C/300°F), beating it into the meringue to form a tight, sticky mass.
7. Fold the warmish nuts and chopped candied peel into the meringue with a large metal spoon until it is more or less evenly dispersed.
8. Divide the nougat between the three sheets of rice paper. Place another rice paper sheet on top of each one to sandwich the nougat, then roll each piece with a rolling pin, spreading the nougat out to a thickness of about 2 cm/1 inch.
9. Leave to cool, then store in an airtight container, separated by sheets of parchment. Add a silica gel sachet to the container if you have one knocking around—any humidity will make the nougat sticky.
Note—A digital or instant-read thermometer is essential to keep a tab on all the syrup temperatures. You need really accurate readings, otherwise the nougat won’t work.
If you want to see how candying fruits is done properly, pay a visit to Italy’s oldest family confectioners, Pietro Romanengo, just outside Genoa. This factory workshop which appears to be completely unmodernized, with only 24 employees, specializes in whole candied fruits, pastel-colored sugar sweets, confit fennel seeds, and cinnamon bark—all made the same way since 1790.
My sister and I called up one day on no notice and had the luck of being given a factory tour by one of the elder family members, Delfina, who must have been in her eighties but was as sprightly as a schoolgirl. She implored us to tuck in to the various candied fruits that lay drying on racks. Each one, after repeated gentle blanching to soften the fruit, had been dipped nightly into copper basins that contained ever-sweeter solutions of hot syrup, in a process that lasted three weeks.
Figs crusted with sugar, clementines that dripped with syrup as you bit into them, and tiny, peeled fudge-like pears (preserved as though in a Renaissance painting). Every cell in their being had been replaced by sugar. It’s a dazzling art form and we showed our appreciation by gobbling up as much as we could. Beautiful Delfina beamed at our obvious pleasure, revealing a mouth full of rotten tooth stumps that easily accommodated the whole candied chestnut she popped in.
They also produce beautiful natural flower waters, which I adore, especially the sciroppo di rose. The roses used are picked early in the morning, gathered from the gardens of crumbling aristocratic villas from the surrounding riviera. If you ever get a chance to visit their original shop in central Genoa, take a bottle home each of their orange flower water and rose syrup. They are great for use in Ricotta and Canditi ice cream (this page) and Apricot and Rose Petal sorbet (this page). Don’t forget your toothbrush.
I do my candying at the beginning of the year, mostly with interesting types of citrus I’ve collected through the winter. Thick slabs of grapefruit and citron rind are crucial to Ricotta and Canditi ice cream (this page) and Nougat (this page), and delicious in Choc Ices too (this page).
The quantities for this recipe matter less than the principle as they can be adjusted as you go along. Just take it from me that you will need a lot of sugar.
Take care not to boil the syrup for too long in between soaks; it can catch and burn on the bottom of the pan, especially once it starts to thicken, and this will ruin its flavor. Once the syrup thickens it can be tempting to start reheating it with the fruits still contained inside, as it’s easier to strain them from warm syrup. Unfortunately, it’s also really easy to forget about them…a number of times I’ve come very close to the end of a lengthy candying process only to do this, leaving the pan on the hob and wandering off, then remembering with a blood-curdling scream—returning to find a little pan of cinder and about a million hours and kilos of sugar wasted. You must never boil the fruits in the syrup as this toughens them and stops the sugar from being able to penetrate the fruit.
Sea salt
Cloves and cinnamon sticks (optional)
500 g/1 lb fruit of your choice (I mostly use thick slices of grapefruit, orange and lemon peel, whole clementines or kumquats, and quartered citrons or unripe green walnuts)
2 kg/4½ lb sugar
1. Bring a large pan of water to a boil with a pinch of salt. If you are making candied green walnuts, add a few cloves and a couple cinnamon sticks to flavor the water.
2. Add the peels and fruits to the boiling water (if using whole fruits, make sure to pierce their skins with the tip of a knife first). Reduce the heat to a simmer, and poach them for 5 minutes. Strain the fruits and refresh with clean water and a new pinch of salt and repeat this process at least three times to remove much of the bitterness. Do not boil as this may break up the fruits. Peels may need 30 to 40 minutes eventual poaching time and citrons and walnuts longer until they are completely tender, 50 to 60 minutes. Strain the fruits and set aside while you make the first batch of syrup.
3. Bring 2 liters/quarts of water and the sugar to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar granules. Once the syrup is boiling, remove the pan from the heat and carefully add the poached fruits. Leave to sit at room temperature overnight.
4. The following day, remove the fruit from the syrup with a slotted spoon and set them aside in a clean container. Bring the syrup to a boil once again and boil for 5 minutes to reduce the water content slightly before removing from the heat and carefully replacing the fruits for another 24-hour soak.
5. Repeat step 4 for as many days as you can bear…aim for at least 12 days for succulence, although a minimum of 7 days would still make for a bright, pleasant result. The syrup should be very thick after 12 days—like runny honey—and the fruits transparent and heavy with sugar. You have achieved peak crystallization when the sugar syrup starts to make a fine dry crust over the top of the fruits, which you can break with your fingertip like thin ice.
6. At this point, if the syrup is thick, the best way to store the fruits is in their syrup in the fridge in a sterilized container. They can keep this way for months.
Note—It makes sense to make a large batch because otherwise the syrup reduces too quickly and you won’t be able to keep the fruit submerged in it. You can follow this method as far (or further) as your time, patience, and ambition allow.
These irresistible frozen chocolate bars filled with ice cream are time-consuming to make, but incredibly satisfying to pop out of their molds, which makes them worth it. Plus they are delicious and make brilliant desserts for a special occasion. Have fun experimenting with your own favorite flavor combinations. Ones I return to often are Damson and Grappa (this page) with Almond Nougat (this page; photo on this page), Strawberry Salad ice cream (this page) with shortbread crumbs that have been mixed with a little melted butter (like a cheesecake base), Blackberry ice cream (this page) with rose-flavored Turkish delight, and Green Walnut ice cream (this page) with sponge cake soaked in sweetened espresso. You’ll need a 6- or 9-mold silicone tray (molds can be any shape but bar shapes work particularly well), a pastry brush, and a piping bag.
400 g/1 lb good-quality chocolate of your choice
1 liter/1 quart freshly churned ice cream
150 g/5 oz something nice (nougat, candied citron, nut brittle, cubes of Turkish delight, sponge cake dampened with eau de vie, or shortbread all make tasty additions)
1. Break the chocolate into pieces and place it in a bowl over a pan of simmering water. Make sure that the bottom of the bowl isn’t touching the water or the chocolate may seize. Melt the chocolate, then remove the pan from the heat, leaving the bowl sitting above it to keep warm.
2. Using a clean, dry pastry brush, carefully paint all sides and edges of the molds with chocolate, making sure all corners are completely covered and that the chocolate reaches the top of the mold. Place the molds on a tray and then in the fridge for 10 minutes to harden before applying another layer of melted chocolate in the same way. (You may need to reheat the chocolate for a couple of minutes.) Keep the tray of molds in the freezer to get very cold while you churn the ice cream and prepare the fillings.
3. Divide your filling of choice into portions for however many molds you mean to fill. You will want them to fill about a quarter of each mold, and the rest should be ice cream. Place the fillings on a wax paper–lined plate or tray in the freezer.
4. Once the ice cream is churned, quickly transfer it to a piping bag. Remove the molds and fillings from the freezer, snip the end off the piping bag, and pipe each mold half-full with ice cream. Press the fillings into the ice cream then finish filling the molds with the remaining ice cream. Smooth the top of each filled mold so that it’s flat and reasonably level, then replace the molds in the freezer to harden overnight.
5. The following day, melt the last bit of chocolate over the pan of water again—it should be liquid but not too hot. Using a silicone spatula, smooth a thick layer of melted chocolate over the base of each mold and right to the edges to seal in all of the ice cream, then return them to the freezer.
6. After 3 hours the molds will be hard frozen enough again for you to upend them and carefully pop each chocolate ice cream bar out. These choc ices will keep in an airtight container in the freezer for up to a month.
