At Least We Won't Get Scurvy
May. 25th, 2022 01:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crockpotcauldronGardening today. I mostly try to avoid gardening tasks, because my mother is in something of a frenzy, buying plants, sprouting seeds, shoveling various substances over the garden, making off with kitchen scraps to plant them, and then there's the picking, pruning, watering, weeding, and so on. It is a never ending series of tasks that expand to fill the day, and my mother wanders in for meals starving and exhausted, yet unable to account for the missing time. And we don't even have any fairy rings to blame for it.
Anyway, we have a truly alarming number of citrus trees. I have been trying my best to tackle the lemons, researching recipes that use up a respectable amount of lemon juice or zest - I will not be piddling around with a whole cake that uses a mere teaspoon of zest, you understand. The situation is far too grave. And we can't even foist any off on the neighbors, because everyone in this neighborhood seems to be growing their own citrus. So, here is what works: my mother has some sort of pickled lemon thing, which she seems pleased with, says it will be useful in dishes. She is also doing some kind of lemon salt, which has consumed a satisfying amount of zest. Any time I misjudge how much zest a recipe needs, I throw the remainder at her salt. So far so good. But there were more lemons.
So, lemon curd! İ love the stuff, so I tried my hand at making it. Accidentally cooked the egg white and had to strain it out, but it was still tasty. But two cups is not a reasonable amount of lemon curd for one person to consume. Made a yellow cake recipe from scratch, swapped out half the milk for lemon zest. Turned out okay! Dense buttery cake, slight zing of lemon, convinced my parents to heap lemon curd and whipped cream on top. It went well, but the recipe made two solid cake rounds, and it was a struggle for the three of us to consume them both, as they just got denser with time. Still, made a good dent in the lemon curd.
Lemon pudding cake turned out better than expected. I'm not sure if I did it wrong, but it went into the oven looking like a half digested cloud. I have a pact with my parents that we will eat whatever crawls out of the oven, so we awaited the results nervously. But apparently it managed to separate into a layer of perfectly nice cake on top of some perfectly nice pudding. What a magic trick!
Next, lemonade. Found a recipe for it, you make sugar syrup with zest, then add lemon juice. You store it in the fridge, and spoon it into a glass, add water, and it's lemonade! I had to double the amount of lemon juice involved, it was extremely sweet and not very lemony. I am going to make myself a Fancy Restaurant Lemonade with strawberry slices and a whole mint sprig. Very exciting.
Pie recipes are good at absorbing an alarming amount of fruit. I had to decide between Ohio Shaker Lemon Pie, which seems to be made of whole sliced lemons, and Lemon Meringue Pie, which is basically lemon curd with meringue on top. I make beze on the regular, and I figured I shouldn't let the lemon curd incident scare me, so I went with lemon meringue. Well, it wasn't terrible. I will use finer sugar next time, a less buttery crust, and I will fine tune the sequencing so it isn't as much of a scramble to get all three parts together at the right time. I did use the meringue recipe without cornstarch, so it's not going to keep well, but unfortunately three people can't eat an entire pie in one sitting, so we will see whether it has turned back into slime overnight.
My mother said her teeth hurt from all the sweet lemon stuff, and the rest of the lemons have vanished. My mother is discussing using lemon in cleaning products next.
Anyway, in the absence of lemons to cook, I have been conscripted into garden tasks again. Harvesting mallow seeds for replanting, deadheading the daisies, and picking oranges. And now, I must begin searching for orange recipes.
Anyway, we have a truly alarming number of citrus trees. I have been trying my best to tackle the lemons, researching recipes that use up a respectable amount of lemon juice or zest - I will not be piddling around with a whole cake that uses a mere teaspoon of zest, you understand. The situation is far too grave. And we can't even foist any off on the neighbors, because everyone in this neighborhood seems to be growing their own citrus. So, here is what works: my mother has some sort of pickled lemon thing, which she seems pleased with, says it will be useful in dishes. She is also doing some kind of lemon salt, which has consumed a satisfying amount of zest. Any time I misjudge how much zest a recipe needs, I throw the remainder at her salt. So far so good. But there were more lemons.
So, lemon curd! İ love the stuff, so I tried my hand at making it. Accidentally cooked the egg white and had to strain it out, but it was still tasty. But two cups is not a reasonable amount of lemon curd for one person to consume. Made a yellow cake recipe from scratch, swapped out half the milk for lemon zest. Turned out okay! Dense buttery cake, slight zing of lemon, convinced my parents to heap lemon curd and whipped cream on top. It went well, but the recipe made two solid cake rounds, and it was a struggle for the three of us to consume them both, as they just got denser with time. Still, made a good dent in the lemon curd.
Lemon pudding cake turned out better than expected. I'm not sure if I did it wrong, but it went into the oven looking like a half digested cloud. I have a pact with my parents that we will eat whatever crawls out of the oven, so we awaited the results nervously. But apparently it managed to separate into a layer of perfectly nice cake on top of some perfectly nice pudding. What a magic trick!
Next, lemonade. Found a recipe for it, you make sugar syrup with zest, then add lemon juice. You store it in the fridge, and spoon it into a glass, add water, and it's lemonade! I had to double the amount of lemon juice involved, it was extremely sweet and not very lemony. I am going to make myself a Fancy Restaurant Lemonade with strawberry slices and a whole mint sprig. Very exciting.
Pie recipes are good at absorbing an alarming amount of fruit. I had to decide between Ohio Shaker Lemon Pie, which seems to be made of whole sliced lemons, and Lemon Meringue Pie, which is basically lemon curd with meringue on top. I make beze on the regular, and I figured I shouldn't let the lemon curd incident scare me, so I went with lemon meringue. Well, it wasn't terrible. I will use finer sugar next time, a less buttery crust, and I will fine tune the sequencing so it isn't as much of a scramble to get all three parts together at the right time. I did use the meringue recipe without cornstarch, so it's not going to keep well, but unfortunately three people can't eat an entire pie in one sitting, so we will see whether it has turned back into slime overnight.
My mother said her teeth hurt from all the sweet lemon stuff, and the rest of the lemons have vanished. My mother is discussing using lemon in cleaning products next.
Anyway, in the absence of lemons to cook, I have been conscripted into garden tasks again. Harvesting mallow seeds for replanting, deadheading the daisies, and picking oranges. And now, I must begin searching for orange recipes.
