A Recipe for Wayward Fruit

You cannot enhance a tomato picked warm from the vine nor an oyster scraped live from its shell. A pie is nothing but a lowly tomb for a ripe Bing cherry and a Texas peach eaten anywhere but over the sink is nothing short of sin. Some ingredients are so prim, so preternaturally perfect that further refinement in an over-zealous kitchen would ruin them completely.

But for every superior product there is an ingredient in need of some schooling. The plantain is one such ruffian, defiantly starchy until boiled or fried into submission. Rhubarb, frustratingly stalkey, must be stewed until spineless. And don’t forget the astringent quince, quite unpleasant until sweetened, simmered and locked tightly in a mason jar. These ingredients are by no means undesirable, they simply require a bit of prodding….sometimes blatant abuse, to render them edible.

Grapefruit is my personal wayward ingredient. The social deviant of the fruit word, grapefruit is a deceitful wench. She lures you in with ruby red juicy-ness only to spit in your eye, her bitter, pithy demeanor only making her tougher to swallow. If any fruit deserves to be crammed into a corset and told to sit up straight, it’s the grapefruit.

I probably need not say that I avoid grapefruit desserts, or used to until I encountered this Grapefruit-Rosemary Sorbet. It is a grapefruit graduated from finishing school, proof that a little rehabilitation can deem any ingredient delicious.

Pink Grapefruit-Rosemary Sorbet

Adapted From Claudia Flemming’s, The Last Course
Yield: 1 1/2 pints

1 cup simple syrup (2 c sugar to 1 1/2 cups water equaling 2 1/2 cups simple syrup.)
2 sprigs rosemary
2 cups strained pink grapefruit juice (about 3-4 grapefruits)

In a small saucepan, bring the simple syrup and rosemary to a simmer. Cook for 30 seconds, then strain the syrup into a medium bowl. If the syrup doesn’t taste strong enough, allow the rosemary to steep a few minutes longer.

Stir the grapefruit juice into the rosemary syrup. Chill the mixture until it is very cold. Freeze in and ice cream machine.