Tonight I'm planning to make lemon curd from approximately 60 Meyer Lemons the boys picked a couple days ago. The lemons are large, ripe and orange-gold. Their perfume has been filling the kitchen with the most heavenly aroma. We'll squeeze them all tonight and half will be used to make Meyer lemonade, another portion will go in to meyer lemon curd, and a final portion will make lemon squares.
But what to do with all the left over lemon rinds? I'm going to make candied meyer lemon peels. These particular lemons look like they'll make great candidates for this application. Candied citrus peels are great for eating plain, for use in baking, teas, as a garnish or dipped in to dark chocolate. By my estimates we'll have pounds and pounds of candied meyer lemon peels as a byproduct of all all the juicing we're going to do.
For dinner I'm going to make jumbo lump crab cakes served with a garlic/meyer lemon aioli. To accompany, I'll snip some leaves from my newly emerged baby lettuce and make a nice little salad. I have a bottle of white wine chilling and it's just the ticket for this meal. The artichokes look so tempting and can certainly be harvested now but if I leave them to get a little bigger, they'll make a meal unto themselves.
About Me
Rachel is the R&D chef at Veronica Foods Company, and graduated at the top of her class at Organizzazione Nazionale Assagiatori Olio di Oliva and holds an ONAOO Certificate of Sensory Aptitude deeming her an expert olive oil taster. She is uniquely focused on all aspects of olive oil including and specifically using olive oil as a "spice" in chemistry driven culinary applications. As an olive oil evaluator, educator, chef, and gardener she enjoys life to the fullest whilst blogging about her olive oil-centric culinary journey.
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4 comments:
Your idea for using up lemons sound wonderful! I wonder if my Lisbon lemons would work well as a lemon curd. I hadn't thought about that. It would certainly have a stronger lemon flavor than the Meyer. I've been making Lemon Cello with the rinds, juicing and freezing in ice cubes for lemonade later this summer. One lady who was making the Lemon Cello with me said she discovered that the rinds, at bottling time were already candied. I'll try it this time.
I'd love to have your recipe for lemon cello. If you need a good citrus curd recipe let me know. It's basically interchabgeable with limes, oranges and lemons.
Making Lemoncello takes 80 days and requires some patience. You'll need 2, 5th bottles of 100 proof vodka. The recipe I found says Everclear, but that stuff is illegal in California. Be sure the vodka is 100 proof. It gets watered down with simple syrup later. The only one I've found is Smirnoff (black label) at Safeway or BevMo.
Use about 15 - 20 very clean lemons with as few blemishes as possible, and with a vegetable peeler just get the skin or zest. You'll want the pieces to be big so it's easier to strain them out later. Be careful not to get the pith. If you do, take a knife and scrape it off. Any little bit of pith makes it bitter as I found in my first batch. Put the zested peels into a gallon jar with a tight fitting lid and add one of the bottles of vodka. Seal it tightly shut and let it sit in the back of your closet or other cool dark place for 40 days. You can give it a swirl once in awhile if you like.
When you take it out, the vodka will be very yellow. Add to the lemon and vodka the second bottle of vodka. Make a simple syrup of 3 1/2 cups water and 3 cups of sugar. Cool and add to the vodka/lemon mixture. Seal it back up and stick back into your closet for another 40 days.
The last phase is to strain and bottle it. I reuse the vodka bottles. You can also buy some pretty bottles at Cost Plus or similar store for gifts.
For the first strain, use a fine sieve to get out all the lemon peels, but to get a beautiful clear yellow color, use a funnel with a cone coffee filter for the second strain. You will likely use a lot of the filters, but what comes out is a beautiful jewel-toned yellow. This part is pretty time consuming, but worth it.
Store the bottle you will serve in the freezer or, if you have a big freezer, put all of them in there. It won't freeze because of all the alcohol. Then you will have this awesome, very cold refreshing aperitif to sit out on a nice summer evening and watch your beautiful garden grow.
This recipe is not quite as sweet as most. Many recipes call for as much as 5 cups of sugar. But using less really gives you a very clean,lemony drink. You can also serve it over ice cream, add to your tea or I suppose even spike your lemonade.
One woman said that your lemon peels should be almost white by the time you are finished.
I'd love to try your lemon curd recipe!
Thanks Cal! I really appreciate the recipe. I'm going to get started on some right away.
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