medtran49
Forum GOD!
There was a high-end Italian restaurant owned and run by a family from Abruzzo that we used to absolutely love. Unfortunately, it closed after several years because the chef/owner burned out and couldn't deal with the pressure of so much work anymore. Most of the times we went, he'd serve us either their homemade limoncello or what he called punch, which was a brown, syrupy drink. While we can buy limoncello locally, though we prefer our homemade, we have never been able to find punch. I finally found some on line, but by the time shipping is added, it's going to be the better part of $80 for a single bottle that we aren't even sure is the right thing. Now, we've paid that much or more for a bottle of wine or champagne from time to time, but those have been well known houses with proven track records. One day recently, I decided to look again for a recipe for homemade punch, but this time I got the idea of googling in Italian. Yea, success! I found 2 recipes. One just with mandarin orange zest and sugar, the other with the addition of cinnamon, cloves, and vanilla. In both, part of the sugar is caramelized to a deep golden brown, basically nearly burnt. I just got finished zesting 3 pounds of mandarins and put the divided zest in 2 bottles of grain alcohol. I'll add the other spices in 1 bottle. They have to sit for 7 days now, then get the sugar, then sit for at least another 7 days. Recipe to follow after we taste and see which one we like better.
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