Orange Flavoured Rhubarb Sorbet

As long as the rhubarb season last, it is sure that I am going to prepare every week something delicious. This year, I have only used them in desserts so far, however I have plans to integrate rhubarb in a main course or even in a starter. I can not wait until the first real local strawberries are available. You can get local ones already, but these are just to early and are far from being fragant and juicy. Anyway, as soon as the strawberry season starts, I am going to combine it with rhubarb and asparagus and I can hardly wait to do so! That is going to be an awesome trio! But anyway, rhubarb sorbet. Nothing cools you better then a ball of fruit sorbet on a warm day, like we have these days. Well, to be exact, this time it is only half fruit sorbet, because rhubarb, as most of us know, is actually a vegetable. Before heading to the kitchen, I have checked a few recipes for rhubarb sorbet, but most of them calls for juice and I have no opportunity to juice the rhubarb so I decided to use puree instead and to create my own recipe. I've found two oranges, I guess I bought them somewhen end of March, so I have no idea how they survived for such a long time, in such a good condition!


For the very first time, I used invert sugar for the sorbet, and I bet that is what made it have such a silky consistency. Just unbelievable! I can not explain, why I've waited for such a long time until I used this magic sugar. Invert sugar syrup is a mixture of glucose and fructose; it is obtained by splitting sucrose into these two components. It can be easily made at home by adding roughly one gram of citric acid or ascorbic acid per kilogram of sugar. Cream of tartar (one gram per kilogram) or fresh lemon juice (10 millilitres per kilogram) may also be used.The mixture is boiled for 20 minutes, and will convert enough of the sucrose to effectively prevent crystallization, without giving a noticeably sour taste. For an exact recipe see this post (in German). (source:wikipedia)


Ingredients:
650 g rhubarb
130 g sugar
70 g invert sugar
90 ml water
juice of 2 oranges
star anise

Trim rhubarb and slice 2 cm thick. Cook it together with the orange juice and star anise until soft, then remove the anise and puree. Cook a syrup out of the sugars and stir it to the puree. Let the mixture cool and leave the rest of the work for the ice cream machine or freeze it for about 50 minutes then give it a good stir and repeat it at least 3 more times every half an hour.