Our family has a long tradition and history of making its own food, beverages and liqour.
Since I was little I can remember my family ’creating’ products like wine, marmalade, sausages, liquor, fresh pasta, sun dried tomatoes, artichokes in oil, all kinds of meat products of lifestock etcetera.
The older generations were basically self-sufficient in their existence and survival. Generation after generation this has lead to an accumulation of knowledge, experience and expertise which is passed on (degressively unfortunately, due to changes in our family structures, jobs/paths and societal environment.)
The interesting thing is that the knowledge is not only focussed on the products themselves, but also Nature, to respect it, understand it and ”cooperate” with it in an integral respectful way.
The first recipe is the well-known Limoncello. Limoncello is served as a digestive, and it is at its best when the bottle is stored in a freezer to be served cold.
Limoncello as described by Wikipedia:
Limoncello is an Italian lemon liqueur mainly produced in Southern Italy, mainly in the region around the Gulf of Naples, the Sorrentine Peninsula and the coast of Amalfi and islands of Procida, Ischia and Capri, but also in Sicily, Sardinia, Menton in France and the Maltese island of Gozo. It is made from lemon rinds (traditionally from the Sorrento lemon, though most lemons will produce satisfactory limoncello), alcohol, water, and sugar. It is bright yellow in color, sweet and lemony, but not sour since it contains no lemon juice.
Under current circumstances, this is one of the things which can be made fairly easy when thinking of space, ingredients, weather etc.
Ingredients for one bottle of Limoncello:
* 6-7 lemons
* 1 liter of pure alcohol
* 800 ml water
* 600 gr sugar
The two challenges with this recipe relate to the lemons and the alcohol.
The lemons must originate from biological cultivation which do not spray the lemons with chemicals!
If you would use lemons from “normal” cultivation which are sprayed with chemicals and you soak them in alchohol, the effects of the chemicals will intensify, so an absolute no-go.
Secondly, finding pure alcohol can be difficult, for instance -as far as we know- it is not sold in the Netherlands and we thus get it from Belgium. I don’t know the regulation in other countries but that’s to you to find out. The alcohol we have has a 94%. The amount of water determines how strong the Limoncello will be in the end, our recipe consists of 800 ml, but you can experiment with less or more water.
From our experience, less than 800 ml water is too strong. With our recipe only the vaporized alchohol gets to your head already.
Procedure:
Remove the peel from the lemon with a sharp knife, make sure you don’t take along the inner -white- substance of the lemon.
Mix the peels of the lemons with one litre of alcohol and let the two mingle for three days. Make sure you have a big enough bottle to pour in all the ingredients you need to mix.
Boil the 800 ml of water and mix the sugar in it. Let the mixture cool down, do not pour directly into the bottle with alcohol and peels as the alchohol will vaporize quickly at high temperatures.
In the meantime, filter the peels of the lemons out of the alcohol.
Pour the water and sugar into the bottle with the filtered alcohol.
Let the bottle of Limoncello rest for a while. When you still see particles of peels, do filter one more time if you want.
Like with every recipe, it gives you only the technicalities, the experience and know-how comes with time.
If you have a different recipe for Limoncello or nice variants on Limoncello, do let me know!
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