On my bicycle trip to Iezer mountains after successfully descending almost 1000m I’ve met a bunch of women collecting forest fruits. They asked me:
– you come from the top of the mountains, aren’t you?
– yes, I replied
– so you must have tasted all that ripe bilberry growing near the top (at almost 2400m)
At this point I said nothing since in the foggy, cold and wet morning I could not see, or pay attention at, any bilberry.
When I arrived home I went straight to the market and found a lot of it since it’s bilberry season indeed. I first though about a bilberry cake but since it was much warmer here in the city than in the mountains I decided on the very simple recipe of sorbet. In romanian this is called “sorbet de afine” (not to be confused with serbet) sau “inghetata de afine”.
Bilberry sorbet
Ingredients
- 1/2 kg of ripe wild bilberries. The wild one are much more stronger in flavor and staining ability than the cultivated ones.
- 2 cups of simple syrup = 1 cup sugar + 1 cup water
- a pinch of salt
- lemon juice from half a lemon
Method
- meld sugar in water on a low flame to make simple syrup
- add bilberries and mix with a blender
- add a pinch of salt and the lemon juice
- pour in a glass bowl and store in the fridge until solid
- if you like stirred sorbet then with a fork mix from time to time to avoid the creation of a large mass as in the sour cherry sorbet I did a few weeks ago
- best served with a bit of fresh mint (from my mint pot) for a stronger yet subtle flavor
Cherry sorbet
Comments:
len -
Hi Magdalena, isn’t it so simple to make? I’ll just take more care next time when buying the bilberries not to stain my favorite shirt :)
Magdalena -
Of course that I know wild bilberries. This is one of the national wild Polish fruits. I love them, and bilberry ice cream are one of my favorite.