I can’t EXACTLY say I made this week’s recipe for Cook the Book Fridays from David Lebovitz’s My Paris Kitchen but I made a valiant attempt.
Having arrived home from Haiti on Thursday morning around 1am, I certainly didn’t have any leftover champagne hanging around the house and was too tired to even think about opening a bottle on Thursday night. So, what to do for this recipe calling for champagne? I raided the fridge and found leftover wine (stuck in there before we left because I thought I could always use it for cooking) and figured I’d go with that!
Second challenge of this week’s recipe is the fact that my ice cream maker lives at work and there is no way I was going into work to collect it for just this one recipe so I went to my “go to” David Lebovitz recipe for making ice cream without an ice cream maker (I’ve used it here really successfully) to see if it might apply here. Unfortunately, since this isn’t a creamy mixture, I couldn’t see it working so (on the advice of my good friend Cher), I looked around for a granita recipe (sans ice cream maker, bien sûr) and found this advice on The Kitchn.
I ended up freezing the juice in a Ziploc bag, then when it was frozen, I mashed it up a bit by hand with my pastry blender, then poured the wine in and mashed it a little bit more. I stuck this back in the freezer (just in a bowl this time) for another couple of hours, mashed it some more and voilà – a kind of granita-sorbet-slushie!
Since this melted pretty quickly, I chose to eat it with a straw rather than a spoon but no matter how you serve it, it was pretty tasty. Would it have been better with champagne? Maybe? I’m not sure how much you could have actually tasted it but clearly I’ll need to try this again sometime when there’s leftover champagne (um, like when would that ever happen?). I liked the consistency of this granita version too – though I love a good sorbet, granita is a mighty fine substitute if you don’t have an ice cream maker.
Get the recipe for David Lebovitz’s Tangerine-champagne sorbet on page 317 of My Paris Kitchen.
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Honestly this is one of the funniest blog posts you have ever written (did you mean to be funny or is it that I just need more laughs these days). There were so many detours and curves in your post that I actually thought Cher had written it. I think your version sounds delicious and the photos are great. (Was that a plastic straw? I hope not. I don’t think it is. I made my annual trek to the Las Vegas Ikea (an exciting adventure for me) and bot some user-friendly straws to take back to Aspen.) Hope to see and hear more about your trip to Haiti. I don’t know how you can one-up 2018, it was such a good one for you and Neil, but I’m counting on you to pull off another blockbuster year). XOX
I’m not sure what’s funny here – I mean it’s practically the same ingredients just a different method which makes it a different dish. But whatever – delicious result!
I’m with Mary: this was sot of like a Cook the Book Fridays ode to dear departed Super Dave. 😉
I’m fairly certain I would not let any “leftover” (ha) Champagne get such treatment! 😉
That said, I could be convinced to part with a lesser sparkling wine…
Though I’d be more inclined to try using an aromatic white for this; something like an off-dry Gewuztraminer from the Alsace, a Torrontes from Argentina, or even a Lambrusca from Italy.
We could have used one of these a few times last week in Haiti!!! 🙂
This certainly was easy, and no matter how it was made, it sure is refreshing. Yours looks so pretty.
I am sorry, thought I commented earlier, but evidently not.
I went with a bottle of a 4% alcohol concoction of rum and orange bubbly drink, ending with enough contents to fill three quarters of a 750ml ice cream container. Have not introduced it to hubby though…. too good to share!
Very nice way to circumvent equipment availability issues! You know, I had a friend of a friend visit Haiti the exact same time you did for a volunteer trip! I was surprised at the synchronicity of that. 🙂 Looks great, Mardi!
We changed the ingredients and adapted with the methodology. They are worked. It speaks of how versatile the recipe is. The straws add a lot of charm. Good looking!
Good save! Actually, I thought it was a funny post too, channeling your inner Cher. Even making it in an ice cream maker, it melts pretty fast. I like the way you served it with a straw. We still have some left. Maybe I’ll serve it as a cocktail!
Tangerine sounds delightful Mardi and looks sensational – my concocted drink around the same time was Lychee-Champagne Sorbet 🙂
Ah – Glad to see the alternate technique worked. (Although, I am pretty sure you would have figured out something genius to make it work, as you are the master of clever alternatives!)
Sadly, I do have a half split of a very lovely Laurent-Perrier Brut sitting in my refrigerator that I was unable to muddle through on NYE. I am still debating whether to sacrifice it here or somewhere else….