Important things Archaeology has taught me

Not my picture, but a picture of the town I'm staying in

I am away on a work trip in extremely rural, extremely western Virginia staying in a town with a population of approximately 2,000, and I have learned an exceptionally important lesson this week.  Do not, no matter the temptation, get Chinese food in a town in rural America with a population that is smaller than the amount you owe your credit card.  I had to learn this the hard way by spending eight hours in a an open field excavating in 90 degree heat with no bathroom facility except some sort of taller weeds over by the electric fence.  People often rave of the amazing local restaurants they find in tiny towns and overlooked locations (for example, pick almost any episode of The Splendid Table  and wait for the Stern's segment), but I am here to tell you that, while delicious local cuisine surely exists, you're going to 
get a lot of food poisoning along the way. Ugh.

I did have a great dinner tonight (cheeseburger, which is, of 
course, one of the almost unmessupable foods there is, shoestring fries, properly sweetened sweet tea, and a Hersey's chocolate ice cream cone), however, made even better by the waitress making one of my co-workers sweet tea made with salt instead of sugar. It was funny. Very very funny. And I am just a little bit mean.

The Anatomy of a Culinary Experiment: Lemon Curd Explosion

As a direct result of my previous culinary adventure, what has been dubbed in my household (by me, at least) Limoncello Quest 2010, I awoke Sunday morning with the dawning realization that I now had six naked lemons rapidly decaying in my fridge, and no real interest in home-made lemonade, but instead a strange desire for something I usually abhor, specifically, lemon curd.

Now 2004 is what I think was probably the height of lemon curd popularity due only to the facts that a) my sister requested it as a wedding cake filling and as a direct result I b) first tasted lemon curd in a jar and found it....blech.  Since then occasionally I will hear a mutter as I walk past someone, "Oh lemon curd is my favorite...,"  "Lemon curd is the best....," "Lemon curd cured my ingrown toenails, deloused my child, and personalized my handkerchiefs with my family crest after spending weeks doing detailed genealogical research on my family," and I am not going to lie, I scoff.  See, my lemon curd experience was with something in a jar bought from the Albuquerque Whole Foods (Hi!  I love you!  I miss you!  Your croissants were the best, and I had a nice view of the hot air balloons from your parking lot that one morning!), and what I had was something vaguely lemon flavored, the texture of almost congealed egg yolks, and left me largely confused as to why my sister would want me to ruin a perfectly good cake with a layer of $6-a-jar yuppie-flavored yuck. So I refused, and made her a perfectly good other-flavored cake (two layers of marble cake filled with chocolate ganache flavored with orange liquor, and one layer of lemon cake filled with raspberrry buttercream, thank you very much.) You can imagine, therefore, how much I really wanted to get rid of these lemons before I head out of town for 7 days for a work trip to even consider the lemon curd option.  

The first thing I needed was a recipe, and despite having at least a score of modern and historic cook books scattered around the house, the first and often last place I go for a recipe is the internet. Here is photographic proof of my cookbook problem, also, my kitchen:

After some lazy and exceptionally half-hearted googling I ended up on an Alton Brown recipe for lemon curd based solely, I am ashamed to admit, on name recognition and a very brief skim of the recipe to make sure that I had all the ingredients and equipment. Did I say "very brief"? That's probably going to come back to haunt me, don't you think? I have nothing against Mr. Brown, not in the least because he occasionally has a nutritional anthropologist on his show, but I am going to confess now, while I am in a confessional sort of mood, that I have never had an Alton Brown recipe go to plan, and I am not going to lie, this recipe has not broken my streak. There, I said it. Now we can just move on.


The Ingredients:

The ingredients are dead easy-four lemons-juiced, a cup of sugar, a stick of butter, the yolks of five eggs (mine are organic, free range, from Trader Joe's.  They are brown.  That makes me angry.  All the organic eggs at Trader Joe's are brown.  As if the color of the egg has anything to do with how "natural" they are.  My intrepid housemate C had to listen to a very long and public rant about how manipulative I find that.  I am full of information and I lack social graces.  Sorry C.  Sorry Trader Joe's check out boy.  Not sorry, eggs.)  I actually start with five eggs from the farmer's market, but the first one I crack open has a...well, a large white hard thing in it, which I think was in reality was only a very well-developed chalaza (which is the word for the white stringy thing in eggs.  It is apparently what suspends the egg yolk inside the albumen and is not, as I have long feared, a little baby chicken and the harder it is, the fresher the egg) and it was especially disconcerting because I usually end up separating eggs with my bare hands, and feeling it slip between my fingers, I immediately jumped straight to imagining a little chicken skeleton, complete with beak. I couldn't do it, and so threw that egg away, washed the bowl, washed my hands, washed the egg white bowl, washed my hands, took a deep breath, lied to C about why I was wasting good eggs, and moved on to the nice commercially produced and totally guaranteed to be unfertilized eggs from Trader Joe's.

The Juicing:

The recipe very specifically calls for the juice of four lemons.  In lieu of a reamer, I squozed these lemons with my BARE HANDS, and not in a prissy Rachel Ray sort of juicing, where you squeeze the lemon  upright to contain the seeds.  Oh no, I dug my fingers in and squeezed out every last drop of juice from these suckers, seeds and all.  I strained the resulting liquid through a metal colander to get out the seeds, didn't worry about the pulp, and the end result was about a cup and a quarter of delicious lemon juice, and the desiccated husks of what were formerly lemons.  

The Whisking:

Next I whisked together the egg yolks (I saved the egg whites in the freezer.  It seems like every time I cook in an attempt to use up the leftovers of a previous project, all I create is more leftovers) while I heated up water.  I whisked and whisked and glanced over at the recipe, when I noticed two things that were vexing.  1) although the ingredients list clearly calls for the juice of 4 lemons, in the directions it indicates that only 1/3 of a cup is needed.  So I just juiced the life out of 2 lemons that could have lived another day, all for no real reason, and 2) the ingredients list that I so insouciantly skimmed asks not just for the juice, but the juice and ZEST of four lemons.  You know, that zest, the zest that is currently getting a spa treatment in a half-gallon of vodka under my paper towel dispenser near the toaster over.  That zest.  Oh.  

But, right at my moment of greatest panic (the moment right before you think-"Ah, F- this.  Who needs recipes?  I can totally wing this.")  I remembered what kind of women I am.  I am the kind of women who has an emergency stash of lemon zest in the freezer, what's who.  And so I dug it out, dumped it in, and moved on with the show.  It's good to be prepared (if by "prepared" you mean "a disorganized pack-rat").  

The Simmering:

I needed a double boiler, but no one but my grandma actually ever owned one, I am convinced, so I MacGyvered one out of a stainless steel bowl and a tiny pot filled a quarter of the way with water.  I turned it on high, and then realized that unless I was aiming for sweet lemony scrambled eggs I'd better reduce it to a simmer, so this is water, simmering. 

The Whisking, Part II:

I could totally be a hand model, don't you think?  Double boiler assembled, I then commenced the second phase of whisking.  I whisked and whisked and noticed no obvious thickening.  In fact, what slowly dawned on me is that what I was making was just a sweetened hollandaise sauce, which everyone knows is just a hot mayonnaise. I then tried to engage C in a dialog about why we, as individuals of European extraction, love mayonnaise, because it's true. I love mayo like it was a handsome movie actor who wanted me to be his paid kitten wrangler. It was actually a kind of disgusting realization for me, but since I was already up to my wrists in slowly thickening egg yolks I kept right on whisking until I could do this:

which Mr. Brown assured me would mean that my yolk mixture was at the appropriate thickness. The whole thing took about 8 minutes. That seemed a little brief to me, and despite the whole clinging to the back of a spoon and able to withstand me drawing a line in it, the curd seemed a little thin to me, but who am I to argue with a beloved television cook? I took it off the heat, and now it was time for...

The Whisking, Part III, now in 4-D!:

This stage of the whisking required me to whisk in to the custardy yolky sugary lemony hot mess on the right an entire stick of butter, one tablespoon at a time. A little research shows me that the use of butter in curd is a hotly debated topic (not really) and that curd can be produced with or without it. Without, curd is basically jelly with egg yolks added, with, it's basically hollandaise with sugar. We have already covered my love of egg- and fat-based sauces. I whisked and whisked and whisked some more. I even stuck my finger in it and licked it off, and unsurprisingly, eggs+sugar+butter+anything tastes pretty freaking great. It was not...curd, however. What I had was something light and a little frothy, creamy, and while a beautiful texture for hollandaise, did not resemble the jarred Whole Food curd of yesteryear in any way.

The Storing:

Allegedly, this "lemon curd" can last, refrigerated, for up to three weeks, so I washed out some Ball jars, poured in my warm curd, slapped some sarran wrap on the top since we don't have any of those little disks that seal jars, put on the rings, and there I had it. Two jars of not exactly lemon curd, but something that did, I am not going to lie, taste very very good. What I am going to do with it, I have no idea.

The Conclusion: 

In conclusion, Mr. Brown, your recipe sucked, although it did result in something that tasted good.  However, if your recipe for Chicken Marsala resulted in a full English Breakfast, it means it's sort of a huge huge delicious failure.  And now, of course, not only do I have lemon curd, I also have a cup of lemon juice, two unjuiced naked lemons, and four egg whites.  What can I make with that?  

Postscript:

Since I am currently "unemployed", meaning I have a job, but only on a project by project basis, and since the next project doesn't start until the 12th, I had a completely leisurely morning to make some cream biscuits from Fanny Farmer (because I want to make strawberry shortcake for dinner tonight anyway), brew up some Pinon coffee from Trader Joe's and then cover everything with lemon curd.  It was honestly a pretty great breakfast, even though the lemon curd melted and separated as soon as it hit the hot biscuit.  Would eat again. 

I love that this looks like a crime scene photo of my breakfast. 

Du Soleil Dans Un Verre

So my housemate C scored a bunch of free lemons from her work and brought them home, where they have lingered on the counter being chubby, yellow, and tempting for the last week. I am currently fixated on all things yellow, specifically because I bought the first season (first half of the first season? Whatever,) of Glee, and there's one episode where they sing "Walking on Sunshine" (and some other song by Beyonce or someone) while dancing around in adorable bright yellow dresses. Now, of course everyone who's ever met my mother knows that "Walking on Sunshine" was my favorite song when I was 5, and so I was an easy sell.  Glee, season 1, episode 6 My newfound interest in the color yellow has naturally lead to a newfound interest in things that are yellow, specifically lemons and all the wonderful things lemons can be made into, which, given my equally passionate love of strong drink led me directly to Limoncello. I have never had Limoncello. I am not certain how I landed upon Limoncello, but damn it, if the universe has planted the idea of Limoncello in my head and then handed me all the ingredients to make it, namely lemons and a half drunk handle of vodka someone left at the house after a party, who am I to argue?  

I am therefore documenting my Limoncello progress here for you, all five of my internet friends including both my housemates and my sister (Hey guys! Hey!) to follow along. Now with pictures, and, if you're my housemates, if you read this in the kitchen it's also in Smell-O-Vision.  

 

The Ingredients: 

As you can see from the picture on the top, I have a) messy countertops, b) a plethora of lemons, and c) a seriously wry sense of humor if you're familiar with the photographic component of most lush food photo shoot on internet food communities. Wry, I tell you, not poorly lit and executed.  

-What I have is 6 lemons that I have washed in hot water with a little dish soap and then I scrubbed them under warm running water with the scrubby side of a sponge to try to get off most of the wax and poison which I am sure lurks in every citrusy pore.  

- I also have half a 1.75 liter bottle of 80 proof vodka. Most Limoncello recipes call for Everclear, but I am relatively certain that Everclear is not available in Virginia and that it leads to severe post-imbibing gustatory distress (in that it makes me bonanza barf until I see stars and pink elephants circle my head mockingly). Also, the vodka was free, which is the best price anything can be.  

-I bought a 1 gallon glass jar from the World Market, which I was going to sanitize in the dishwasher, but that meant I would need to empty out the dish washer, fill it with dirty dishes, and then run the damned thing, so instead I washed it with soap and very hot water and then dried it with a clean dish cloth prior to use.  

-And I have one useless and purely artistic sprig of lavender, which will not be used in today's adventure.  

The Zesting: Using an only slightly broken microplane I zested all six lemons on to a piece of waxed paper, trying hard to not zest the pith, which will allegedly make the Limoncello bitter, or my fingers, which will make the Limoncello pink and um...gross. All that zesting resulted in a lightly lemon-scented person and a whole lot of zest. Now I have naked lemons.  

The Mixing: Once I got my truely awesome mountain of zest together, I needed to get on to the internet to do some really pointless math because I was having a (as my mother calls it) dyslexia attack and couldn't figure out how many milliliters were in a liter. 1000, apparently. Oops. All the recipes I had called for 2 750 ml bottles of booze and an obscene number of lemons (12-14), while I had half of a 1.75 l bottle of vodka and 6 lemons. An embarrassingly long time later I just dumped all the vodka I had into the jar with the lemon zest. Math. It's slippery when wet.  

That empty bottle looks like I have a serious problem. It might not be wrong.  

The Labeling:

Everyone knows that clear and cogent labeling is the most important step in any experiment. Here I have labelled the big jar of lemony, vodka-y goodness with the name, stage of processing, and date, after putting a piece of plastic wrap over the mouth of the jar and tightening the lid as tightly as my carpal tunnel will allow. I hope I got the jar clean enough and it doesn't go all Ka-Blewy! because there was some stray wild yeast or something...I don't really know how this all works. The internet said tighten the lid and so, I obey.

The Storing:

And now, for my least favorite step, I must store it away in a cool dark place when the only interaction I can have with it for the next 2 to 4 weeks is to gaze at it wistfully, and occasionally give it a light shake-ah shake-ah to encourage the zest to give up their oils. I have loving tucked the jar away next to the flour and coffee in a corner of the kitchen counter. And now all I can do is wait. And make lemonade with all those poor naked lemons.  

Thanks for coming with my on this fabulous Limoncello adventure. Stay tuned for Stage 2: Making and Adding Simple Syrup. Until next time, go listen to I'm Walking on Sunshine and dance around like a dork. It's therapeutic. I'm Walking on Sunshine, by Katrina and the Waves