Recipe - Japanese Grape Sorbet

This is my fifth, and I have to say, most favorite sorbet to date. All of them originally inspired by one of my favorite restaurants - Maido Yakitori. The link to his sorbet blog posts are here. With Google translator you should be able to understand the system he uses to make them.

Pione Grapes

 Given the prices that some of these Japanese grapes go for, I admit that we don't buy them that often. But recently Sanwa Market opened in Yokosuka and they were selling these grapes for a modest $5 a bunch. They had other varieties on sale in the $8-$12 range as well. So two packs of Pione grapes came home to be made into sorbet.

Pione grapes are a cross between the Kyoho 巨峰 grape and the Cannon Hall Muscat grape. It was developed by Hideo Igawa in 1957 (Sharon Hahn, Grocery Trekker website). Kyoho grapes are the most popular in Japan and have the largest market share. They are also more expensive. But the Pione grape has excellent flavor and I highly recommend you try either them or the the Kyoho at least once. Pione is ピオーネin Katakana and you should be able to spot it on the packaging.

The grapes in the commissary just cannot be compared to these. They Kyoho kanji again is 巨峰. You'll see it on a lot of Japanese candy products such as the package I've shown below.  

The taste was very much like a grape popsicle. You might think that grape popsicles are an artificial grape flavor, but these grapes really do taste like that. That's why I say you should try them. The red grapes sold at most American stores don't have flavor when compared to these.   

The recipe is:
- Two bunches of Japanese Grapes
- 1 cup of water
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 1 5g package of Jellice (a Jello type product) - can be omitted if you don't want to bother finding it.
- Optional: 1 Tbsp Cointreau or a cup of white wine. If you use the wine, then only use a 1/2 cup of water. 

After washing, add the grapes to a food processor and blend well. These grapes produce a tremendous amount of juice. I was surprised that just two bunches would make a full Tupperware container of sorbet.

The chef at Maido strained the skin out. I choose not to as the skin can be eaten too. The skin provides a bit of a sour bite, while the inside is all sweet. Straining the skin out is up to you.

One advantage of straining though is that if there are any seeds, you'll catch them here as well. Although the package said they were seedless (the kanji at the top left of the package), there were a few that had a seed - maybe 5% did. Perhaps that is one reason they were a little cheaper than some of the other grapes. 

After processing

 After processing, pour the juice into a large Tupperware container.

Separately, add your water, sugar, and Jellice to a small pot and bring it to a boil to melt the sugar and the jello. Remove from the heat and add the white wine or Cointreau if you are using it. Add it to the mixture and blend.

after freezing

After freezing the mixture, you need to cut it up and blend it in the food processor again to aerate it. You can avoid this step if you're able to regularly mix it while it's freezing.

blend the frozen mixture to aerate it

Add it all back to the container and smooth it a bit

 As I said this was excellent! and I will be going back for some additional grapes to make some more.

 The package above shows some Kyoho grape jelly snacks. This particular one was in a 100 Yen store.

The original package. From Yamanashi Prefecture. Yamanashi Prefecture is very close by and is the largest grape producing region in Japan.