Fruit coulis (fruit purée)

A recipe from cooking-ez.com

For 450 g, you will need:

• 1 400 g fruit of your choice
• 2 ½ lemon
• 3 1 pinch vitamin C (optional)
• 4 4 tablespoons Sugar syrup
• Total weight: 525 grams

Times:

Preparation
25 min.

Step by step recipe

1	Wash fruit (except if using strawberries), and cut into small pieces if fruit are the size of apricots or larger. Put in the goblet of a blender, add 1 pinch vitamin C, squeeze ½ lemon over, and add 4 tablespoons Sugar syrup or caster sugar. Note: The smaller the pieces, the quicker and more efficient the blending.
2	Blend until obtaining a very smooth purée.
3	Pour preparation into a fine strainer and place over a bowl.
4	Then, with a maryse or soft spatula, press on bottom of the strainer and give a movement from one side towards the other, to "press" the coulis into the bottom of the strainer. Your goal is to force the coulis through the strainer, while keeping back any seeds and skins to make a very smooth coulis.
5	It's a rather long operation, but the result will be good as your efforts. Stop when there is only a pile of skin and seeds left in the strainer. These you can throw away.
6	Your coulis is now finished, you can use it as it is, for a sorbet for instance by mixing it with the same volume of syrup. But you can also sweeten it (ideally in my view in 1/3 sugar to 2/3 coulis) and use it to go with an ice-cream, a cookie, a frozen nougat.
7	If you'd like to freeze your coulis, it's important to not freeze it in one large block, as this is inconvenient later: long to defroze, impossible to cut up or almost, etc... Better to divide up the coulis into small packs of 200 g You can pour this amount into small freezer bags, seal and label them, then put to freeze.
8	Even more practical: make "ice-cubes" of coulis, by pouring it into moulds (silicon if possible, it is easier to remove from after freezing) and leaving overnight in the freezer.
9	The following day, put the coulis-cubes in a big bag and return to the freezer (remember to weigh a coulis-cube, to know how how much you have when you want to use them).

Remarks

There is deliberately very little sugar, so that you can sweeten later to your taste, just before use.
This method (mixing, sifting, freezing) can be applied to most fruits. Small soft fruit: raspberries, redcurrants, blackberries, etc. (blackcurrants are a bit different) Medium sized: apricots, peaches, pears, kiwi, etc... And large ones: pineapple etc. It allows you to stock up during summer when fruit is abundant, and use it later, during the cold months.

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