I can happily spend hours browsing in some of the large ethnic grocery stores around Atlanta, with aisle after aisle of obscure Asian, Hispanic, European and Middle Eastern ingredients.
I’m often drawn to the citrus selection, which offers fruit never seen in regular supermarkets, such as pomelos, sour oranges and makrut limes.
I recently stumbled upon a mound of what looked like large lemons but were labelled “sweet limes”. I’d never seen these before so jumped online to educate myself. Commonly found in South and Southeast Asia it is a different fruit to regular and key limes, and as the name suggests the flavour is sweeter and more mild. I couldn’t resist grabbing a few to play with.
Although a primarily Asian fruit I decided to give my sweet limes an ancient British treatment and turn them into a posset. Dating back to the middle ages, a posset was originally a spiced hot milky drink, with the milk curdled by the addition of wine or ale. Over the centuries it has evolved into more of a dessert which is set rather than liquid but is still made by curdling cream.
In Asia sweet limes are often simply used in drinks so I was disappointed when I squeezed and tasted some and found the juice rather bland, so I added a little regular lime juice to my posset to ensure a good citrus tang in the final result, which turned out to be a perfect summer dessert: light and creamy with a delicate lime flavour.
Sweet Lime Posset
2 cups heavy cream
5 tbs granulated sugar
3 tbs freshly squeezed sweet lime juice
2 tbs freshly squeezed lime juice
Put the cream in a pan, add the sugar and bring to a boil over medium high heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar.
Boil for 4 minutes ensuring the sugar is dissolved and making sure the cream doesn’t burn or boil over.
Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the lime juice. Allow the mix to steep for 20 minutes.
Stir the mixture again and then spoon into serving dishes. Once it is cool, refrigerate for at least a couple of hours to set before enjoying.
