Summer's
cosmically here, and you should sip some chilled limoncello to welcome it properly.
Limoncello
is an Italian lemon liqueur which is prolific in Italy and, if you've
been so fortunate to have visited the place, that would already be
clear to you. Anecdotal evidence has told me that just about every
serious meal in Italy is followed by a small chilled glass of
limoncello, and it's almost offensive if you refuse it. It's generally
served neat and chilled, though you can really take it any way you like
it, and you can even mix with it.
The bad news is that limoncello, for some reason, isn't very easy to find in stores. The good news is that it is
easy as hell to make. The better news is that once you've mastered
making limoncello, you've unlocked an easy way to make tons of kinds of
your own liqueurs at home.
Making your own limoncello follows a beautiful and modular process that's easily adapted:
Step 1) Fill a vessel (preferably glass... empty booze bottles work) with an amount of vodka.
Step 2) Place into the same vessel an amount of lemon zest.
Step 3) Let vessel sit for an amount of time.
Step 4) Strain the zest out of the vodka, and add some amount of sugar.
(All
ingredient and time amounts are nebulous because it's all to taste. A
higher and lower spirit/flavorant balance will require more or less
time for a proper infusion, respectively. You should at least be using about 1 lemon's worth of zest for each cup of vodka. The infusion should probably sit undisturbed for at least a week before straining.)
As
I've been quoted
saying in articles before, this is a
GIGO
situation: infusing crappy vodka with lemon peels doesn't improve how
the vodka tastes. You don't need to use Grey Goose, but a
middle shelf alternative should be fine.
Tradition dictates your
lemon zest should be completely devoid of
pith, which is bitter. But
if you like a bitter note to your limoncello, you won't hear me
complain. You can avoid pith in a variety of ways. I like to peel the
lemons with a vegetable peeler, and then use the flexible tip of a
sharp knife to shave most of the pith off from the back (I'm not a
perfectionist). But if you want no pith at all, I would say the easiest
way is to use a
micro-plane to zest the fruit very lightly. Whether
your zest is in long wide strips or fine flecks, it doesn't matter.
After
letting the mixture sit, strain out the solids using a coffee filter. To this infused
spirit you can add sugar. Since sugar does not dissolve well in
alcohol, you should firstly make a syrup by dissolving the sugar into
water, and
then add the syrup to the spirit. You can make a simple
syrup or a
rich simple syrup, depending on how much additional water
you'd like to add to your spirit to sweeten it, thereby lowering its
proof.
Once you add your sweetener, you're ready to drink. Chilled in the freezer and served neat is traditional, but I'll take it any way.
What's a good limoncello cocktail? I might first direct you to my own
Southern Soprano...
The directions above are an easy guideline which you can use in more generic ways than it seems. All you need is 1)
a solvent, 2)
a flavorant, and 3)
a sweetener. In the case of limoncello, those 3 variables end up looking like:
vodka,
lemon peel, and
sugar
I'll leave you with a list of variations that I myself have tried with varying degrees of success, some of whose names are made up and some of whose are not...
Meyer limoncello: vodka, Meyer lemon peel, sugar
Limonmielo: vodka, lemon peel, honey
Limettacello: vodka, lime peel, sugar - my personal favorite
Pompelmocello: vodka, grapefruit peel, sugar
Pomelocello: vodka,
pomelo peel, sugar
Uglicello: vodka,
Uglifruit peel, sugar
Gimoncello: gin, lemon peel, sugar
Mojitocello: white rum, lime peel & mint, sugar
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