It's limoncello time again.

I finally found a few Sorrento lemons here. They are rather large and ovoid and, um, er, smell like limoncello. I added three regular lemons, used my death-defying peeler to get strips of just the zest, and they are now sitting in a half-liter of Everclear. The jar is pretty full, actually.

Anyway, I still have half a bottle of Everclear to make something else. Maybe orange?

Of course, I squoze the otherwise-whole lemons and have half a wine bottle full of lemon juice. As my waistline does not really need lemon bars, lemon cake, lemon chiffon, or lemon curd, I think I'm going to make up some lemonade. Although I suppose sherbet is a good option, too.

Were the Sorrento lemons from a market? I never see those around here.

I started a batch of vin de pamplemousse a week or so ago. Sliced pink grapefruit and oranges, white wine, vodka, and a vanilla pod, all sitting for another month or so.

Anyway, I still have half a bottle of Everclear to make something else. Maybe orange?

Or kaffir lime?

-Paul W.

Mike - Yes! I found them at Agata & Valentina, which is a sort of Italian Balducci's (!) kind of place. Their website said they have Calabresi lemons, which I've never heard of but I figure OK. So, I call them up, and I get the produce guy on the phone, and I ask him whether he actually has any Calabresi lemons... no. Then I ask whether he has any Sorrento lemons... yes. So, I went there, they had half a dozen lemons, one was rotting away so I left that one but took all the others. The lady at checkout called them Italian lemons while the receipt said Calabresi lemons. By any name, I guess.

I'm curious about the pamplemousse you're making. I've read that grapefruit and lime don't extract very well.

Oh, to live in New York City. I have friends here who make limoncello from Meyer lemons, and it's fine, but not like what you get in Italy. The Sorrento lemons ought to go a long way to correcting that.

I started making vin de pamplemousse years ago from a recipe in a Chez Panisse cookbook. It's a refreshing aperitif, with some bitterness from the grapefruit countered by the sugar and orange. Good served over ice in the summer, a little like Lillet. It extracts reasonably well, perhaps due to using thin slices of the whole fruit and giving it a good stir every day or two.

We drink a lot of Lillet Blanc around here so this is ver-r-ry interesting!

The recipe was originally in the Chez Panisse Fruit cookbook. That one was somewhere on the web years ago but I've been unable to find it recently. The one I used this time around was at this site.

That looks like a good recipe. I don't have a jar big enough for half a case of wine and six grapefruits but maybe I can do two.

The recipe was originally in the Chez Panisse Fruit cookbook. That one was somewhere on the web years ago but I've been unable to find it recently. The one I used this time around was at this site.

OK, I have started up two jars. Each has one grapefruit, half a blood orange, a bottle of Quincy, a skoosh of vodka, a dose of sugar, and a flavor: one has a teaspoon of vanilla sugar, the other has two blades from a star anise. I'll keep you posted.

Thanks, Mike, for the idea!

The recipe was originally in the Chez Panisse Fruit cookbook. That one was somewhere on the web years ago but I've been unable to find it recently. The one I used this time around was at this site.

OK, I have started up two jars. Each has one grapefruit, half a blood orange, a bottle of Quincy, a skoosh of vodka, a dose of sugar, and a flavor: one has a teaspoon of vanilla sugar, the other has two blades from a star anise. I'll keep you posted.

Thanks, Mike, for the idea!

Great! I hope you like the results. I really like the stuff, as do some of my friends. I did give a bottle to a co-worker a number of years ago as she had given me the grapefruit and I told her I planned to make a sort of grapefruit wine out of it. I don't know what she thought it would taste like, but she really didn't like it!

I'm telling myself it's going to be grapefruit-centric Lillet. (And I just checked that my statin is one of the ones less-affected so whee!)