spanish melon sorbet

say hello to our newest purchase – an ice cream maker. my partner got it in his head that he’d like to make gelato and so off we went to the appliance store, only to find out that there exists a single model of ice cream maker on the island: a kenwood (im280) which required the bowl to be frozen at least overnight. this meant no instant gratification, and the fact that we were actually paying more than a hundred for what was a mere insulated bowl. but we still got it.

human folly must be excused. and now, let me tell you about our virgin batch of iced goodness: a melon sherbet.

I saw these beautiful melons in the supermarket, and the partner found one with multiple cracks on the skin – which indicate high levels of sugar, apparently – and so the decision was made (especially since I found heidi’s recipe which required barely four ingredients.

this came out easy enough. wedge the melon, blitz it up, mix it with the remaining ingredients, and then churn it in the machine! you see in the photos that we were straining the pulp out of the pureed melon – and that was my fault. I just assumed we wouldn’t want the pulp in the sherbet, and so we ate it all up. tasted like the best sort of baby food you can get out there – not that I’ve had any recently, of course. the sherbet itself tasted great, and you don’t taste the milk explicitly at all; I think the milk just helps make the difference between a smoother-on-the-tongue sherbet, and granita, which has always marked me as being incredibly assertive and too icy.

so now our weekends are marked with batches of ice cream, and let me tell you that recipes may abound, but we’ve found that ice cream tastes are more disparate than preferences for cake. or perhaps they are just as varied, but I have less experience with making ice cream. the feel of the ice cream, the creaminess of the end product, the sweetness – suffice it to say that we have not really found our holy grail recipe, and so work is still in progress. stay tuned!

spanish melon sherbet (adapted from 101 Cookbooks)

450g juicy melon (we used a light-green spanish specimen)
3 tbsp honey
0.5 cup whole milk
Big pinch of salt

1. wedge your melons (you can get 8 wedges, which are easy to work with), cut off the rind, and cut the flesh into small pieces. isn’t it interesting how those tiny pieces look like mountains?
2. blitz this all up in your food processor until you get a puree. mix in the milk and the salt, and add honey to taste. you might need to warm your honey up by placing the jar in a bowl of hot water so it gets more fluid.
3. pour this into your ice cream maker, and let it do its work (according to the manual). if you’re in a hot country like we are, your ice cream maker might gain heat too quickly for the ice cream to completely solidify in the bowl, so what we usually do is remove the mixture when we no longer see crystals forming visibly and freeze it in a container until solid.