Pink Grapefruit Cordial

I received a comment from my friend Bovey Belle yesterday indicating that she had some grapefruit to use up that she had found cheaply so I suggested either Grapefruit Curd or Pink Grapefruit Cordial. You see I too have some Grapefruit to use up.  To boot recently I have also seen Pamplemousse (Grapefruit) Cordial for sale in the supermarkets at quite an extravagant price so |I thought I too would try the Pink Grapefruit cordial as I thought it might be different.  The Recipe is from Sarah Raven's Complete Christmas Food and Flowers ISBN: 978-0-7475-9510-6. I am scheduled to make this later in the week but thought I would share the recipe here in case you wanted to have a go too.

Sarah describes it as "a good winter alternative to elderflower".  Its not too sweet and apparently has a clean refreshing taste.  Best diluted about one part of cordial to four with fizzy water.

Makes approximately 3 litres

Ingredients:

6 Pink Grapefruit

1.8 litres of boiling water

1.7kg white sugar (granulated or caster)

50g citric or tartaric acid

Method

Scrub the skins of the grapefruit in hot water to remove any wax.  I usually when preparing citrus do this but I use a new nailbrush to scrub the skins with.  With a swivel potato peeler cut ribbons of rind from the fruit leaving the white pith behind.

Put the rind into a heatproof bowl and pour over the boiling water.  Stir in the sugar keeping the water moving until the sugar has dissolved.  Leave the mixture to cool and then add the juice from the grapefruit and the citric or tartaric acid and steep overnight covered.

Next day strain off the rind and pour the cordial through a funnel into small warm bottles that have been sterilised by being boiled in a pan of water for 10 minutes or run through the dishwasher.  Seal label and date the bottles.  This way the cordial will keep for about a month in the fridge or you can pour it into clean plastic milk cartons and freeze.

However before labelling and dating the bottles I pop the bottles into my baby steriliser and hot water bath process the bottles for about 15 minutes.  This helps take all the air out of the bottles (which is what causes the problem with long term storage of food) and cordials/syrups keep that much longer on the pantry shelf as a result.  Obviously I am careful and the usual rules apply if you don't like the look of something don't use it.  But these are previous posts where I have used the baby steriliser.

http://tarragonnthyme.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/experimentation-with-bottle-steriliser.html and

http://tarragonnthyme.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/sauce-cordial-bottles.html


Catch you all soon.

Pattypan

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