Goats’ Gonads in Limoncello

Love and marriage. Horse and carriage. Dried fruit and booze. Somehow they all just go together.

A couple of years ago I decided that when you have a lemon glut you should make limoncello. But not for me the old cheat’s way of simply throwing a bit of lemon skin into a bottle of vodka and letting it sit for two weeks. No, I trawled the interweb and found what I felt to be the most authentic limoncello recipe available.

Basically it started with ROCKET FUEL FROM A SECRET SOURCE and went from there, for months. Months of turning and scooping and filtering and attracting swarms of bees when it came time to add the syrup.

At its first tasting it drew comments like: “Gawwwdd, it’s like paint stripper.” Even diluted it had that hint-of-Meremere-dragstrip tang that grabbed you by the throat and squeezed so hard your eyes popped, your ears smoked and your nose bled intermittently for the next five days. The most fervent of my boozy friends would do that quick hand-over-glass gesture when I came around with the bottle to top them up. When everyone had left I found shot glasses, still full, hidden behind pot plants.

I can find only one person – an American friend who had other Americans staying for a summer holiday – who actually admitted finishing the entire bottle I had gifted them before their road trip around the South Island. Granted they were trapped in the middle of nowhere, and the moon was full. Granted also, my friend had told a small porky about limoncello being the traditional bevvie of the tangata whenua so that the tourists would have felt churlish to have refused a tipple. You could blame it on the scenery and solitude, but they finished their bottle, then I believe they took their clothes off and painted each other with volcanic mud. At other friends’ houses, the less loyal of those I know, I see the gifted limoncello lurking in the back of their booze cupboards. They’re too frightened for their pipes to even tip it down the sink.

I’m sure all would have been well, or at least a bit better, had I left the recipe alone. But, like Colonel Sanders, I had to keep adding those herbs and spices. I do swear, though, that I DID NOT PUT HABANERO CHILLIES in it.

A couple of years on and the brew has matured. I still have several bottles of the golden elixir just begging to be used so I made a limoncello-and-blueberry trifle the other day that was honestly a triumph. I shall make it again, soon, and this time I’ll take a great big photo and pop it up on Foghorn so you can drool into your keyboard and lick your monitor when your colleagues aren’t watching.

That’s a quarter of a litre gone and just a few litres left.

And, finally, we arrive at the point of the story: the dried-fruit-and-booze part.

I was talking to my sister, who’s not shy around the bottle (a family trait). We were mulling over the idea of soaking something in the limoncello and she thought figs. I’m only telling you this so that when tasting time comes and guests start spitting figs into the garden we’ll all remember who’s to blame. Last night I did a jar of Figs-in-Limoncello and they sit in the fridge like a Hunterian exhibit of dehydrated goats’ gonads aged in formaldehyde, but I’m sure they’ll taste better (or bitter).

The figs may become a sensation but what I’d really like is something special for Mr Scott. Some years ago he used to enjoy one of those special desserts that “wasn’t on the menu” at a local restaurant. I believe they called it something like Fainting Maidens (or not) and it featured apricots soaked in vodka. Before I go tossing dried fruit willy-nilly into jars of booze I have a few questions which I’m hoping someone out there can answer.

1. Is it OK to use ordinary dried fruit which is full of sulphur dioxide when soaking it in booze?
2. Do you have to add sugar? I know you do when making a Rumtopf (with fresh fruit and booze), but does dried fruit need the added sugar? If so, how much?
3. Any tried and true (or completely mad) ideas for fruit/booze combinations?