Refreshing Sorbets

^{Black Cherry Sorbet and Pickled Watermelon Rind}

I have a list of things I am vowing to never buy again. On that list is sorbet and ice cream. I know how to make about six different kinds of ice cream, including frozen yogurt (I call it “frogurt”!) and raw vegan ice cream. Sorbets are really easy, too, in fact much easier than ice cream. So when I happened to come across a sale on black cherries and watermelon, I made a couple of quarts of sorbets.

I pitted the cherries and put them in a blender with a red wine, honey, and spice mixture and pureed them smooth. I poured the mix into a ceramic bowl and tucked it into the freezer while I peeled, diced and pureed the ruby-red watermelon. Normally I would run the diced pieces through a food mill to separate the seeds, but this melon was seedless. I added a little reduced bourbon with some honey, lemon juice, cloves, nutmeg and stick cinnamon. This I strained to catche the spices and worked it into the pureed watermelon. I poured this into a plexiglass dish and it joined the cherry mix in the freezer.

I cleaned up the left over watermelon rind and diced it into small chunks. I made a brine of salt, brown sugar, rice wine vinegar, lemon juice, cloves, stick cinnamon, nutmeg and mint. I brought the mix up to a low simmer. When the ingredients had been allowed to seep for about an hour I strained out the spices again and added the rind, putting it back ont the stove and letting it cook until it was translucent but still firm. I tossed in some lemon slices and a couple of maraschino cherries, poured it off into sanitized jars and sealed them. After they cooled I moved them to the fridge because they were going to get eaten soon anyway.

I opened the freezer and gave the sorbets a stir with a fork, breaking up the sheets of ice forming into little shards. I did this a couple of times over the next several hours. The watermelon sorbet froze harder than the cherry, so I had to pull it out and really scrape and chop it up until I had a redish pink pan of flavorful ice. The cherry sorbet shredded much easier and stayed an amazon crimson color. The next day I took the watermelon sorbet and a jar of watermelon pickle to lunch with some friends. We ate outdoors in their garden and the sorbet went quickly. It didn’t have a really distinct watermelon flavor, but was still pretty good. We put the watermelon pickle on just about everything, from bread to apple slices to sorbet to our martinis. I came home empty handed.

The cherry sorbet I have kept for myself. Nothing sooths and cools as well as a rich, sweet, ice cold snack topped with tart-but-sweet watermelon pickle, especially after mowing the lawn, tending the garden, or walking the dog. The season for these fresh fruits will soon be at and end but I can extend these summer pleasures with a little effort.