One dinner at Lincoln Ristorante by Lincoln Center, we ordered aperitif that was orangecello instead of the typical limoncello. It wasn’t our first time having a different type of sweet liqueur. In fact, our first trip to Florence, I had bought meloncello and fragocello (strawberry). I had never thought to make it until I ran out of them! The horrors!
I had these tangerines lying around so I decided to make them into a sweet liqueur. In Italian, tangerines are called mandarini. This confused me since I kept thinking it was mandarin orange. In fact, they are the same word!
To make mand’ricello, I followed Giada’s limoncello recipe but halved the recipe.
Ingredients:
- 3 large tangerines, peels only! The whole rind is too bitter!!!!
- 250 ml of Vodka or pure alcohol, you’ll see that I found this interesting gluten-free vodka made from quinoa. I’m not into the diet fad but I thought it would be interesting to try.
- 2 cups of water
- 1 1/2 cup of sugar, here, I used 6 blocks of palm sugar, this will change the color of the liqueur
Directions
1. I zested some of the tangerine but also to quicken the step, I peeled the rind and cut out the pith, the white part. Soak these in vokda for 4 days.
2. Strain out the peels.
3. Make simple syrup. When it’s cooled down, add to the strained tangerine/vodka water.
4. Put in the refridgerator for a couple of hours or few days and serve cold after a meal.