Okay, here it is: cabernet sauvignon blackberry sorbet

Boy is this sentence going to sound pretentious: cooking is an art of accretion. Now, I can see a few faces crinkling up and saying "WHA?" I know, I know, but it's the best I can do, and you already got two recipes today, so calm down y'all.

This is what I mean by that: if you cook, you sort of collect recipes and ideas, and then one day : BOOM. You come up with your own dish. Sometimes it's ok. Sometimes it's not successful, and sometimes, well.... you hit the home run.

This recipe is one such dish, and Annalena shall explain what she means by accretion. If you look back to twi weeks ago, you will see a recipe for rose' raspberry sorbet. Annalena found this recipe by chance, when looking for another one, in David Lebovitz' wonderful book on ice cream. It's a winner.

Now, jump forward a week: Annalena is in a Sicilian restaurant ( a new find), tasting the Guyman's dessert, which includes "cabernet sauvignon blackberry sorbet." This is NOT a Sicilian dessert. Perhaps it is "neo" Sicilian, but whatever it is, it was downright tasty. Wheels began to turn in Annalena's head.

Take another bit of culinary information from years ago: Annalena is eating dinner at "Foreign Cinema" in San Francisco, and is eating a bowl of blackberries for dessert. There is an unusual flavor there, that she recognizes. She goes to the cook and asks "did you put rose geranium leaves in the berries." Said cook stops, eyes widen and there's a big smile. 'WOW. You're the first one to get it right."

Rose geraniums are all over Northern California cooking, as I have said before, in talking about rose geranium pound cake. That rosy flavor matches well with blackberries (in fact, I THINK, but am not sure, that roses and blackberries are somewhat related, botanically. You can get a nasty scratch from blackberry brambles the way you can from roses, that's for sure). In any event, it's a good match. So, Annalena began thinking: what about the leaves in a sorbet? Hell, the worst that could happen is that it's not so good, and while blackberries are not cheap, they are at their cheapest right now, at peak season, and they are GOOD. We have bottles of cabernet sauvignon that we will not drink, but is too good to throw away. And my new rose geranium plant is leafing away in our extra bedroom. The only issue: enough to taste, but not enough to overpower the other flavors. Well, remember the "rule" in cooking: you can add, but you can't take away. So, Annalena decided to start with two leaves. It turned out to be the right amount.

Here comes the recipe. I will bet that if I ask for a show of hands, no one will say they have a rose geranium plant. GET ONE. They will revolutionize your cooking, and you will feel like an old fashioned gal, using something that was used in colonial America. If you really are not up to shopping for one, make the sorbet anyway, it'll be good, but not as unique.

The recipe pretty much follows the raspberry rose' sorbet recipe. For a quart, you need two cups of cabernet sauvignon, 2/3 cup of sugar, and 3 clam shells of blackberries. You heat the wine with the sugar until the sugar melts, and then add the blackberries, off the heat. When the mixture cools down, put the rose geranium leaves in, and then puree the stuff in a blender.

Blackberries have really big seeds, so I decided to filter this one. It was the right choice. I still had about a quart of sorbet base. It's heady, sweet, and with a really complex flavor.

I would imagine that, if you want that "extra note" and don't have the rose geranium, you might get a nice flavor with lemon verbena, or maybe a mint. The brave amongst you might try lemon thyme. Who knows? Do your experiments, and report back to Professor Annalena. She wants to know.