Pineapple sorbet~ Secret recipe Club challenge May 19th 2014

This is my assignment with the Secret Recipe Club.The aim of the club is that you are allocated a blog from which you have to select a recipe and try it and blog about it. My assigned blog was Manu's menu. Manuela lives in Sydney, Australia and she has a wonderful blog with a varied cuisine. I was particularly impressed that she had so many Indian recipes on her blog. I found out this is influenced by her hubby who is Indian. While looking through her blog I decided to pick the pineapple sorbet recipe as it looked refreshing and perfect for a light dessert. I followed the recipe as per her instruction but had to use tinned pineapple in juice instead of fresh pineapple.I added some lemon juice to balance the sweetness. 

Taste the tropics in every mouthful with this refreshing pineapple sorbet.

Ingredients

432 g tinned pineapple chunks in juice
6 tablespoons sugar
Juice and zest of one small lemon

Method:

1. Using a zester, zest the lemon and keep it aside.
2. Cut the lemon in half and extract the juice.
3.Open the tinned pineapple and reserve a few chunks for garnish.Put the remaining pineapple chunks and juice into a blender jug together with the  the lemon juice and sugar.
4. Blend the pineapple pieces to form a smooth purée in the Optimum 9400 blender or any other you may have.
5. Pour the pineapple purée into a tupperware container and add half the lemon zest and stir it in.
6. Place the tupperware in the freezer overnight.
7. Before serving remove the tupperware from the freezer and leave it at room temperature for 5 minutes. 8.After 5 minutes scoop the sorbet into serving cups.Garnish with remaining pineapple chunks and lemon zest.

An InLinkz Link-up


I used my tried and trusted  Optimum 9400 Blender to blend my soup. The blender is so versatile and powerful that it grinds, pulses, makes ice cream, soups and amazing smoothies and nut butters too. It is easy to clean and maintain too.

Dining experience at Copper Leaf, Hampton Wick

A short distance from Kingston-upon-Thames in Hampton Wick, Copper Leaf is a gin bar and restaurant with an extensive list of over 60 gins. It serves modern European cuisine with a fusion of many flavours.

The restaurant is tastefully decorated and offers an ala carte menu as well as a tapas menu. For the gin lovers the restaurant also offers a six-course gin pairing menu. 

Gin is the USP of the restaurant and it is the perfect place to enjoy food with a choice of 60 different gins from their bar.

I visited copper leaf with two friends, Manjiri from travelsfortaste and Heidi from kitchentalkandtravels I am a teetotaller and also a vegetarian but to my amazement I had the most wonderful dining experience at Copper Leaf.

 My friends enjoyed the Gin of the week cocktail, which was Gabriel Boudier Saffron Gin, served with Fever-Tree Light Tonic, orange zest, chocolate bitters and hand carved ice made by mixologist Hannah.

Since I don't drink Hannah made me their their signature mocktails, the Lychee Rose and the Tropical Crush.

Both were beautifully presented and tasted amazing although, I really enjoyed the Lychee Rose which was very unique in flavour.

For dinner we chose to sample the Tapas menu rather than the a la carte menu, this was a good decision as it really was exquisite. Each dish was lovingly prepared and beautifully presented. My friends tucked into various meat dishes, and were totally wowed by them.

Being a vegetarian I chose the vegetarian options:

The Tempura Asparagus served with lime Aioli  and poached egg was really crispy and delicious. I chose not to have the poached egg with it.

The Manchego cheese croquettes, were crispy filled balls of oozing cheese served with caramelised onions and pickled walnuts. What a tantalising match of flavours this was.

My palate was craving Indian flavours and I was pleasantly surprised with the little bowl of rice with spiced chickpeas with pomegranate, potato, tamarind and chilli sauce arrived. The flavours and textures were well balanced.

Lastly I tried the pan fried green beans, sundried tomato, roasted garlic and pine nuts. The beans were al dente and perfectly cooked. 

Accompanying this I also had the Batata Bravas, in comparison to the other dishes these were not as exciting in presentation but still were very tasty.

The chef also offered us the paella option, but we declined it as at this stage we were really full and would have not done justice to it wholeheartedly.

Finally when my palate was dancing with a flavour explosion and stomach was screaming no more, I was enticed with the dessert menu. Now a girl can never say no to dessert!!

We had Grilled pineapple, rum infused cherries, fresh mint and coconut sorbet featured above.
My friends Heidi had the Peanut butter cheesecake, candied peanuts, miso caramel served with ice cream.

 The final  most watering dessert was lavender and white chocolate panna cotta, macerated strawberries and ginger crumble. It was so pretty like art on a plate.

The evening was wonderful, we had lovely food and the ambience was great too. We finally finished the meal with Negroni with tea cocktail.

I was a guest at Copper Leaf, all opinions shared are of my own experience. I will certainly be visiting Copper Leaf again with my family.

I enjoy eating out and always try to find restaurants that offer good vegetarian choice. You may like to read about my visit to Chakra and Ritorno for inspiration As both restaurants offer a varied vegetarian menu.