Chinotto (Without the Chinotto)

I have been trying different brands of chinotto lately, looking for the perfect drink to complement a meal.

From San Pellegrino, to Stappi to Fabio. They are either far too sweet or far too expensive. My solution (as is the theme here) was to make my own.

I purchased some grapefruits and blood oranges from the local fruit and veg shop for $9. This is my entire budget for the chinotto. It turns out you don't actually need chinotto oranges to make chinotto, and I didn't think it was necessary to go out of my way to buy some. Also this means I won't need to convince my parents to plant a tree that fruits overly sour and bitter fruit. There is a reason the Italians made it into a drink.

Anyway, the process here is very simple. Cut the fruit, roast the fruit (with spices), and then drown it in 1:1 simple syrup.

I roasted with cinnamon, coriander, nutmeg, cardamom, black pepper and fennel. This is just what I had in the house, the only necessary ones are cinnamon, coriander and nutmeg according to the article I was following.

They took a bit longer to roast than I expected, but the smell was very nice - worth the wait.

Poured the syrup over the top, covering all the fruit. Now to leave it in the fridge for a few weeks. I'll add an update when I taste it, though it looks pretty nice as is.

Update

It was tasty! I had about 1.25L of syrup overall. I think I overdid it on the cardamom. Also, when decanting the syrup, I made a mistake where I squeezed the juice out of the citrus fruits to get as much liquid as possible, which made it taste slightly worse than the one bottle which I just poured as normal.

That being said, my main worry - that it would be too sweet - was not a problem. It was just a matter of time for the flavours to seep into the syrup.