Well, where do I start?
- When I signed on for this project over a year ago, I received a colour-coded Excel list of the recipes in Marcella's tome. I am Wednesday - purple recipes.
- Some big challenges; many current family favourites; several veggie recipes which made use of my garden and which will shape my planting as long as I garden; dozens of unexpected delights.
- But, when I looked over "my" list, this was one of the easy ones - fruit, sugar, milk, ice, Maraschino liqueur - sounds like what I imagine a "smoothie" to be - I'm a wine & beer guy, never had one.
- Maraschino liqueur? Cherries, right? I read Marcella's note back on p.580 - the recipe appears on p.609, but when I went to my local LCBO - Liquour Control Board of Ontario, the world's largest purchaser of alcoholic beverages and a significant asset to the economic well-being of my province - the closest I could find was Schloss Kirsch, an Austrian cherry liqueur.
- Ah well, close enough, I thought - until I read Beth's post on May 8.
- Oh, you mean all cherry liqueurs are not created equal? According to Marcella, "Maraschino is a fine Italian liqueur made from the pulp and crushed pits of the marasca cherry."
- Ok, I'm always trying to be faithful to Marcella's directions - pause for Marcella's outraged interjection - so I searched on the LCBO's web site for a source of the correct liqueur
- Hey, guess what? I found one - LUXARDO MARASCHINO ORIGANLE LIQUEUR - figured I could post a mea culpa on the site until I got the correct ingredient.
- But, whereas I have traveled more than an hour to locate an ingredient in one of my recipes and have been rescued by co-conspirators more than once, in this case I was stumped. While the liqueur is on the provincial list, it is NOT available at any outlet anywhere in Ontario - an area more than three times the sq. km. of Italy.
So this is my photo of the ingredients sans the crushed ice - I chose raspberries as the fruit:
A blender is the only "cooking" implement used.
The final result, pour deux:
What I liked about this recipe:
Hey, throw everything into a blender, turn it on for a few seconds and dessert is ready.
What I didn't like about this recipe:
Well, the impossibility of obtaining a main ingredient became a huge problem.
Would I make it again?
Probably not, since it is unlikely that I will ever be able to obtain the recommended liqueur, unless I bring it back from one of our trips.
