Restaurant Inspiration - Guillaume at Bennelong and Peach Sorbet

Summer is over and soon the leaves will start turning orange and dropping into my garden en masse.  To use up very ripe end of summer stonefruits, there is nothing better than a fruit sorbet. 

I started an intermittent series last year where I cook something I have eaten in a restaurant.  This was our dessert at Guillaume of Bennelong, where we ate in January.  It is described as strawberries and blackberries with lemon verbena cream, meringue and a trio of raspberries.   This strawberry sorbet was smooth and rich and delicious.

Guillaume is a rather fine dining restaurant located in this anonymous little structure on Sydney Harbour. 

See the little sails on the right - that is where the restaurant is located.   It shrieks Special Occasion (shudder).

However, I had a marvellous meal here, and it was a restaurant which disproved the oft quoted rule that the quality of the food in a restaurant is in inverse proportion to the view. 

The peaches this year have been nothing short of superb.  The orchards got rain and sun at just the right time and we have been feasting on peaches for months now. 

In honour of Guillaume Brahimi, here is a peach sorbet.

First step is to double check the recipe.  In my case this involves reassembling the cookbook from whence it came.  It really is time to bite the bullet and buy a new copy of this book.

Pile the peaches up attractively for a last shot:

Peel and remove pips.  It all looks a bit like a massacre at this stage. Avert your eyes if you need to.  But not whilst holding knife.

Put in food processor with about 100g of caster sugar (the actual recipe calls for 680g peaches and 100g sugar. I find about 6 peaches makes 680g.  You can adjust the proportion of suger down if you do not have enough peaches).

Add a little lemon juice after liquidising. 

Put into ice cream maker.  As an aside, can I just say how much I love this appliance. I am not an appliance person.  We do not have a microwave (yes I am the only person I have ever heard of with children and no microwave), we have no toasted sandwich maker, milkshake maker or popcorn maker (all of which incidentally populated my childhood kitchen in the 1970s so there is obviously something going on there).  

And if you look at the photo above you can see that I have a set of scales which date from 1947.    

But I do have a Girmi GranGelato maker and it is heavenly.   Simple to operate (it has an on/off switch and that is it) and easy to clean, it makes icecream and gelati in about 15 minutes. In my case I had to set it up in the hallway because Certain People were complaining about the churning noise.  But don't let that put you off buying one.  

Here it is once churned suitably.   My camera cannot really capture the pinky blush colour of this sorbet, with little flecks of red (where my peeling skills failed me). 

Divine.
Next up (when I find them), fig sorbet.

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