Frullati – Fresh Fruit Whips
Well, where do I start?
- When I signed on for this project over a year ago, I received a colour-coded Excel list of the recipes in Marcella’s tome. I am Wednesday – purple recipes.
- Some big challenges; many current family favourites; several veggie recipes which made use of my garden and which will shape my planting as long as I garden; dozens of unexpected delights.
- But, when I looked over “my” list, this was one of the easy ones – fruit, sugar, milk, ice, Maraschino liqueur – sounds like what I imagine a “smoothie” to be – I’m a wine & beer guy, never had one.
- Maraschino liqueur? Cherries, right? I read Marcella’s note back on p.580 – the recipe appears on p.609, but when I went to my local LCBO – Liquour Control Board of Ontario, the world’s largest purchaser of alcoholic beverages and a significant asset to the economic well-being of my province – the closest I could find was Schloss Kirsch, an Austrian cherry liqueur.
- Ah well, close enough, I thought – until I read Beth’s post on May 8.
- Oh, you mean all cherry liqueurs are not created equal? According to Marcella, “Maraschino is a fine Italian liqueur made from the pulp and crushed pits of the marasca cherry.”
- Ok, I’m always trying to be faithful to Marcella’s directions – pause for Marcella’s outraged interjection – so I searched on the LCBO’s web site for a source of the correct liqueur
- Hey, guess what? I found one – LUXARDO MARASCHINO ORIGANLE LIQUEUR – figured I could post a mea culpa on this site until I got the correct ingredient.
- But, whereas I have traveled more than an hour to locate an ingredient in one of my recipes and have been rescued by co-conspirators more than once, in this case I was stumped. While the liqueur is on the provincial list, it is NOT available at any outlet anywhere in Ontario – an area more than three times the sq. km. of Italy.
So this is my photo of the ingredients sans the crushed ice – I chose raspberries as the fruit:
A blender is the only “cooking” implement used.
The final result, pour deux:
What I liked about this recipe:
Hey, throw everything into a blender, turn it on for a few seconds and dessert is ready.
What I didn’t like about this recipe:
Well, the impossibility of obtaining a main ingredient became a huge problem.
Would I make it again?
Probably not, since it is unlikely that I will ever be able to obtain the recommended liqueur, unless I bring it back from one of our trips.
It’s a pity that your liquor control board has not discovered the joys of Maraschino. If you have friends who travel to San Francisco, they might find a bottle there for you. This is one of those occasions in which a problem could become an opportunity. There must be dozens of liqueurs available in Ontario, look for a combination of two or more that, when combined, will deliver, if not the flavor of Maraschino, a comparably fruity but not overly sweet taste.
For example, you really can’t make a genuine zuppa inglese without Alchermes, which is not found anywhere in north America, but you can compromise, as I have had to do, as long as you come up with a fragrance and flavor profile that doesn’t contrast unpleasantly with the original.