If you love Limoncello, if you drink Limoncello, if you have got drunk on Limoncello, or if you have never drunk Limoncello but always wanted to ... LEARN TO MAKE THE DRINK YOURSELF
"The first shot tastes sooo good, the second shot goes down sooo easily, then you have your third shot, and Mama Mia, you burn ... " said my new friend Lorenzo while describing the delights of Limoncello, the sweet and lethal lemon-based liqueur that spills out of the Amalfi coast in Italy. Having lost an afternoon to Limoncello during a trip to Sorento the previous day, I couldn't agree more.
So I jumped at the chance when Chef Vincenzo Sorrentino of Ristorante Mediterraneo in Positano offered to teach me how to make Limoncello from scratch.
We started with 1 kg of the finest Sorrentine lemons.
These babies are bigger
than tennis balls, fragrant and delicious,
and only found on the Amalfi coast.
Chef and I skinned them, taking care
to leave out the bitter white parts,
put the skins in a glass jar and
added 1 litre of pure alcohol (95% strength).
Almost immediately the colourless alcohol
started turning lemony.
Ideally the skins should steep in the
alcohol for 10 days. We didn't have
10 days so after 24 hours we
strained the liquid ( which by now was dark
lemon-yellow) into a large pot
Separately we had boiled 1 kg sugar in 1.3 litre water
(note the proportions or you risk death) and cooled it down.
Now we mixed the lemon-alcohol mixture and the sugar-water,
and ended up with a light lemony liquid.
All that was left to do was bottle it using a funnel
( for some reason the shape of the funnel caused
a lot of laughter among the Italians in the kitchen)
And with that ladies and gentlemen, we ended up with
a 2 litre bottle of limoncello of about 45% strength. Part
of this bottle is coming home with me to Hong Kong,
assuming the Customs guys don't take a dim view.
The full Limoncello story and other Italian food and drink adventures on
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