Sorbete de Curuba

Colombia's pale, fragrant highland refresco: the tart banana passionfruit blended with cold milk and a little sugar into a frothy, softly thickened drink

Origin: Colombia

From the journey of Passion Fruit.

The curuba is Colombia's own passion fruit, a long, soft-skinned, downy yellow fruit borne on a vine of the cool Andean highlands and known further south, in Peru and Bolivia, as tumbo or taxo. It is far too sharp to eat raw, and so, almost without exception, it is drunk. The Colombian answer is the sorbete de curuba, which despite its name is not a frozen sorbet at all but a thick, cold, frothy drink of the fruit blended with milk and sugar, one of the great refrescos of the Bogotá savanna and the highland towns. Milk is the key to it: the curuba's acidity is so pronounced that water leaves it thin and aggressive, whereas milk rounds it into something soft, creamy, and floral, pale apricot in colour and faintly perfumed, that tastes of nothing else in the world. Sold at juice counters, made at home in a blender, and drunk at any hour, it is one of the most characteristic flavours of the Colombian Andes, and to Colombians abroad it is one of the tastes of home most sorely missed, since the fruit itself travels badly and is scarcely known outside its own highlands.

Ingredients

  • 6 whole ripe curuba (banana passionfruit), or 250 ml curuba pulp
  • 750 ml cold whole milk
  • 80 g caster sugar, or to taste
  • 1 cup ice cubes

Method

  1. Cut the curuba in half lengthways and scoop out all the pulp and seeds into a blender. Add about a quarter of the milk.
  2. Pulse the pulp with the milk in short bursts, just 3 or 4 seconds at a time, only long enough to loosen the pulp from the seeds. Do not blend continuously.
  3. Pour the mixture through a sieve into a jug, pressing the pulp firmly with the back of a spoon to extract all the juice, and discard the seeds.
  4. Return the strained liquid to the blender with the remaining cold milk, the sugar, and the ice, and blend for 20 to 30 seconds until pale, frothy, and slightly thickened. Taste and add more sugar if needed.
  5. Pour into tall glasses and serve at once, while cold and foaming.

Notes

Never blend the seeds: this is the difference between a fragrant sorbete and a bitter one. The same method, with the same warning, makes the Peruvian and Bolivian refresco de tumbo. For a richer version some cooks replace part of the milk with evaporated milk or add a spoonful of cream. The drink is sometimes fortified with aguardiente for a curuba sour, and the strained pulp also makes an excellent ice cream base.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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