Bubbles n Squeaks: Mandarin Sorbet with Tangelo & Blood Orange Salad

There's something poetic about the blood orange. The exotic fruit who blushes shyly on it's skin, but hides a centre of crimson jewels. Some blood oranges are crimson all the way through, but i like the ones where the red pigment is truly dappled through the otherwise orange flesh, so alluringly to the eye.

This dish comes again from one of my favorite chefs, Frank Camorra. The almost cloyingly sweet sorbet is tempered by the sharpness of the tangelo and blood orange salad. Although you might see this dish and think immediately that this dish would be best in summer: take a moment to think. Blood oranges are a winter fruit, as are tangelos. Although we might immediately associate oranges with sunny Queensland or Florida, and hence summer, Winter is in fact one of the best times to eat good oranges, with the exception of Valencia.

Ingredients (Serves 4 with leftover sorbet)

2kg imperial mandarins
1 lemon
2 cups sugar + 1 tsp extra
3 tangelos
3 blood oranges
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp sweet extra virgin olive oil

Method

The day before serving:

To make a sugar syrup, Place the sugar in a saucepan with 2 cups water.

Heat the mixture over low heat, stirring, until sugar is dissolved and liquid has come to a boil.

Remove from the heat, cover and refrigerate until needed.
Take the 4 best shaped mandarins and slice off the top of each of them.

Prizing the segments away from the skin, remove the mandarin segments from the skin, leaving an empty 'cup' or shell

Place these mandarin shell in the freezer; they will be the containers for the sorbet
Juice the mandarins to get 800ml of juice; if needed, top up with bottled orange juice

Add the juice of the lemon to the mandarin mixture.
Add the sugar syrup, stir, and chill in fridge until very cold.
Transfer the sorbet mixture to an icecream maker and churn as per machine instructions.

Transfer the sorbet back to the freezer and let set overnight.

The day of serving:

Take the blood oranges and tangelos and remove skins:
To remove skins, cut the top and bottom off the fruit.
Run a knife down the edge of the fruit on a board, keeping as close to the edge of the skin as possible to cut away as little of the flesh as you can

Repeat until all skin is removed.
Holding the fruit in your palm, make an incision into almost the centre of the fruit, just to the left or right of a white line of pith.
Make another incision just on the inside of the other side of the segment (the other white line of pith) to remove the segment, without having pith.