Fallen Souffle

One of our fondest memories of Italy is a pizza shop in Milan called Da Willy’s. We frequented this shop about twice a week suring our three week visit but nothing will compare to the first night we were in Milan when we introduced to this quaint shop and an amazing liquor, limoncella. I sweet, syrupy lemony tear, usually sipped after dinner. Well there was no sipping for us, come on we were from ECU, we were taking shots like it was Tequila Night at PB’s. We paid the price the next day when we had to be up and dressed in business attire in 100 degree heat and 100% humidity with no A/C.

Ahh those were the days, we drank much more limoncello while in Italy but had not had since then until our honeymoon. One night on our cruise was Italian night and they sold shot glasses and unlimited limoncello for $3. That was a bargain, we could drink a gallon of it between the two of us, the the older people watched in amazement as we quickly sipped our favorite libation.

So I somehow was feeling nostagic and was staring at a bag of lemons about to turn on me when I felt motivated to make limoncello. As Evan put it, “you don’t have enough to work on, now your making your own booze!?”, well it’s no Moonshine. I had read the review of this recipe and alot of people companied that it was hard to do. Rubbish! As long s you have a good sharp vegetable peeler you are good to go. I would also recommend having a gallon size glass jar with a lid to keep it in. I keep the jar in the freezer and a smaller pretty bottle in the fridge.

Adapted from Everyday Italian’s Giada de Laurentis.
Limoncello
10 lemons
1 (750-ml) bottle vodka
3 1/2 cups water
2 1/2 cups sugar

Using a vegetable peeler, remove the peel from the lemons in long strips (reserve the lemons for another use). Place the lemon peels in a 2-quart pitcher. Pour the vodka over the peels and cover with plastic wrap. Steep the lemon peels in the vodka for 1 week at room temperature.

Stir the water and sugar in a large saucepan over medium heat until the sugar dissolves, about 5 minutes. Cool completely. Pour the sugar syrup over the vodka mixture. Cover and let stand at room temperature overnight. Strain the limoncello through a mesh strainer. Discard the peels. Transfer the limoncello to bottles. Seal the bottles and refrigerate until cold, at least 4 hours, can be frozen.

This liquor should be sipped, not shot and is used after dinner.

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 17th, 2005 at 6:27 pm and is filed under Drinks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.