Ice-Cream Month: Cheat Kalimotxo Sorbet, a Kitchen Experiment (Dairy-, Egg-, and Gluten Free. Contains Alcohol)

¿Te gusta el sorbete? ¡Prueba un poco de kalimotxo!

I'm not a big drinker: I have only ever uploaded one alcoholic recipe, and that was vegan Baileys. But when the sun is shining, and you're enjoying some outdoor barbecues or beach parties, you may need a boozy treat that's refreshing and cooling.

And this is my boozy refreshing offering to you: a kalimotxo sorbet.

But what is kalimotxo?, I hear you ask. It's a Spanish drink, specifically from the Basque region, which is an equal mix of cola and red wine, sometimes with a twist of lime. Although it has now become a staple of high-end and fancy cocktail bars in big cosmopolitan cities, it started life as a drink that Spanish teenagers would concoct in a plastic bag and drink by the plastic cupful to make cheap red wine taste nicer.

I personally really enjoy it: it's nice and fruity and sweet, and the lime gives it a nice kick. And I have now discovered that it is super tasty in the form of a sorbet!

Sorbet traditionally is made in an ice-cream maker to keep the ice crystals small, leaving a smooth feeling when you eat it: fruit juice or purée is mixed with simple syrup, then tested for viscosity using a whole egg in its shell. It's a little bizarre. However, I make mine using a food processor and some glucose syrup, which is why I call it a 'cheat' sorbet. I find that ice-cream mixers are a single-purpose accessory that just take up space in the kitchen, and nowadays most people has food processors.

To make the sorbet, I mixed ½ UK pint (285 millilitres) cola, ½ UK pint (285 millilitres) good quality red wine, 4½ ounces (130 grammes) glucose syrup (I will be writing a post about how to make it, in the meantime you can use corn syrup, or buy some here), and the juice of  one small lime together in a saucepan and heated it until the glucose syrup dissolved. I froze it solid overnight in a tupperware, then blitzed the mixture in a food processor to make it like a smoothie and break up the ice-crystals. I then refroze it solid once more, which took about two hours.

I think I need to do more work on this particular recipe to reduce the iciness, because this is a little crunchy. Stay tuned for more sorbet experiments in the future!