Tag: lemon

Garlic Lemon Cream Pasta

I’ve been on the hunt for a creamy lemon sauce for years and have tried a few that just didn’t do it. They either weren’t lemony enough or had way too much cream (Cliff has no gall bladder – too much cream or butter does him in). This one finally has the right balance of flavor and creaminess. Here’s the original, with my version below.

1 T butter
1 T olive oil
3 large garlic cloves, minced
1 shallot, chopped
Zest of 1 lemon
2 c chicken or vegetable broth
1/4 cup capers
Juice of 1 lemon
1 c artichoke hearts
1/4 cup cream
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
1/2 t herbes des Provence
1 lb broccoli florets (optional)
1 lb pasta

Heat butter and oil to medium in a deep skillet. Sauté garlic, shallots and lemon zest until tender and fragrant. Add broth and simmer until reduced by half and syrupy*. Add capers, lemon juice and artichoke hearts and stir until heated through. Remove from heat and stir in cream and add salt, pepper and herbes. Set aside sauce. Cook pasta and broccoli to desired doneness, drain and toss with sauce.

*I wasn’t happy with the ‘syrupy’ texture and wanted the sauce to be a little thicker, so I added a cornstarch slurry (1 T cornstarch and 1 T water whisked until smooth). Pour the slurry into the simmering sauce and stir well until thickened, then proceed as above.

Avgolemono (Greek Egg & Lemon Soup)

I got this one from here and it’s harder to explain than to make. It looks a little intimidating, what with the tempering, but it is quite simple. I suggest you have someone help you with the tempering, but it is possible to do it alone if you have a stick blender w/whisk attachment and a steady hand.

2 T olive oil
1 small onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
5 c chicken broth
1 c water
3/4 c rice
salt to taste
2 c chicken, cooked and chopped (I used a rotisserie chicken)
1 t black pepper, coarse grind
1 t dill, dried (or 2 t fresh)
3 eggs
1/2 c lemon juice

In a deep soup pot, heat oil over medium-low heat. Sauté onion and garlic until tender and slightly translucent, 3-5 minutes. Pour in chicken broth and water and turn heat to medium. Bring to a gentle boil and add rice. Reduce heat to simmer and cook for 5-7 minutes. Add salt, chicken, pepper and dill and continue simmering 5 minutes.

While the broth is simmering, in a heatproof bowl (I used a large pyrex measuring cup) beat eggs while slowly pouring in lemon juice. Taste a grain of rice; when it’s almost completely cooked, it’s time to temper the eggs. Add hot broth by the ladle (3 will probably be enough) to the eggs while whisking. Once the eggs have warmed up, take the soup pot off the heat and stir the egg mixture into the soup until completely integrated. Serve immediately.

Two MORE great tastes that taste great together

My awesome wife raided the freezer to pull out our last remaining tub of frozen rhubarb compote and apply it as a topping to a lemon mascarpone gelato she found and executed last week. The gelato was pretty good at the time, but five days later, the flavors intensified pleasantly.

It can’t be long now, before rhubarb starts dominating the farmer’s market scene. Please, don’t let it be long now. Our frozen little tubs of compote have lasted almost the whole year, providing us with toppings for our crêpes and the tangy flavor in the batter of Rhubarb Sour Cream Cake.

We need fresh stocks stalks to sound the death knell of this winter.

Lemon Risotto

We’d just returned from Italy with all kinds of ideas and experiences and raw materials for good food prepared at home — welcome, after being on-the-go for so much of September, October and November. We had a few lemons (from the Biomarkt) and shallots and garlic to use up, plus arborio rice and Pecorino Romano cheese from our grocery expeditions.

The original recipe came from our swell How to Cook Everything app (thank you Mark Bittman!), but the version below has our enhancements in it.

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 large shallots, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
Large pinch saffron threads
1½ cups arborio rice
½ cup (120 ml) dry white wine
4 to 6 cups (950 ml to 1400 ml) chicken or vegetable stock
2 to 4 tablespoons softened butter
juice of one lemon
zest of one lemon
½ cup freshly grated Pecorino Romano cheese

Heat the oil in a large, deep nonstick skillet to medium. Then add the shallots, garlic and saffron, and cook, stirring constantly, until they soften, 3 to 5 minutes.

Add the rice and cook, stirring constantly, until it is glossy and coated with the oil, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the white wine. Stir and let the liquid bubble away.

Use a ladle to begin adding the stock, a ladlefull or so at a time, stirring after each addition. When the stock is just about absorbed, add more. The mixture should be neither soupy nor dry. Keep the heat at medium to medium‐high and continue stirring.

Don’t plan on doing anything else while this risotto is going — you gotta keep stirring it. It’s going to take a while to get to that perfect texture. Plan on an a half-hour, but check it occasionally after 20 minutes. You want it to be tender but still with some resistance upon chewing; it could take as long as 30 minutes to reach this stage. When it does, stir in the butter and lemon zest and at least ½ cup of cheese. Taste, adjust the seasoning if necessary, and serve immediately. Throw some more grated cheese on it, if you like.

We used peppercorn Pecorino Romano, so we didn’t need any additional salt, pepper or other seasoning. You will need some of those flavor boosters if you choose a less burly cheese.

We found this recipe went exceedingly well with Roasted Brussels Sprouts.

Lemon Mousse

My desserts have a tendency toward heaviness. I think that’s why I enjoy mousse so much. If there’s anything in which heaviness is an unacceptable attribute, it’s a mousse. And as much as I enjoy chocolate mousse, I liked the idea of a citrus flavor more for warmer weather. And as it happens, it’s simpler to make than chocolate, too. The inspiration comes from Thursday Night Smackdown and the gorgeous pictures over there, but we used our own lemon curd recipe and halved the whole thing. Follow the link for the original, the steps I took are below.

Ingredients
1 recipe lemon curd*, cooled
6 ozs (170 g) mascarpone cheese
3/4 c (180 ml) whipping cream

Using whisk attachment, blend together curd and mascarpone on medium speed until smooth and well-combined. Whip cream and gently fold into curd mixture. Divide into serving dishes and chill at least 4 hours, but consume within 36 hours. Serves 4-6.

*If you want to be really fancy, pass the curd through a fine mesh strainer to get a smoother product. We don’t bother with this, but we’re pretty lazy.

curdish muffins and other culinary day trips

You might think this is another post about Exil based on the title. Not so!

We had a fantastic dinner of tapas at pals An & Alex’s house last night along with pal Matt (who lent us Casino Royale in preparation for tomorrow’s Quantum of Solace viewing) and we brought one of our favorite desserts along to share: Cinnamon Fluff Cake with Lemon Sauce.

But we had two lemons and a cup of buttermilk left over after that. Hmm, what can I do with that? And on a Sunday, without leaving the house?

I recalled a discussion about lemon curd on my favorite old-school bulletin board, found a recipe online that looked doable, and flipped open the old standby for some muffin or biscuit recipes involving buttermilk. I found exactly what I needed pretty quickly and thought I could do a nice wake-up surprise for the better half quickly and easily.

Yeah, in theory.

In reality, I measured out the buttermilk to find I had exactly the amount necessary for the recipe. I thought something must be off while mixing the wet and dry ingredients together, because there was just not enough moisture in there to pour batter into muffin cups. Odd. I thought it must be a typo in the recipe or something, so I just compensated by adding regular milk until I thought it looked OK. Then I was about to get started on the Lemon Curd when I realized the buttermilk had never made it into the mixing bowl at all, and instead regular milk was in there. I really didn’t want to waste the buttermilk, so I dumped it in and added more flour until I thought the texture of the batter was right. And I added another teaspoon of baking powder to make sure I didn’t end up with small-gauge cannon balls. I put it into the oven and crossed my fingers that they would be edible.

I was a little distraught at this point because I thought I could hear Sarah moving around upstairs, and I this to be a breakfast surprise. In my haste to get moving with the curd while the muffins were baking, I neglected to zest one of my two remaining lemons before squishing the juice out of it and discarding the rest into the trash. So I guess the curd is only half as zesty as intended (though I got the juice it called for) — which seems to be zesty enough. Next time we’ll see what it’s supposed to taste like.

The muffins turned out OK, by the way — even in our crappy oven. Because I upped the flour and liquid content without including more salt and sugar, they don’t taste like much, but I’m just glad they baked up nicely despite my mad scientist chemistry meddling. And once you spread the lemon curd on them, you don’t miss any muffin flavor at all.

Later today: continued sausage exploits after last week’s great success.

Lemon Curd

Totally got this wholesale from the wikibooks cookbook, but I managed to deviate accidentally from the recipe and am still quite pleased with the results.

1/2 cup (120ml) lemon juice
2 tablespoons freshly grated lemon zest
1/3 cup (80g) sugar
3 eggs
3/4 stick of unsalted butter (90g)
Pinch of salt (optional, to bring out sweetness and flavor of finished product)

I goofed in that I only used 1 tablespoon of freshly grated lemon zest. It still turned out great — doubling the lemon zest would make it quite intense, I’m sure.

Grate the lemon rinds to produce two tablespoons of zest. Grate only the yellow zest, avoid the inner white pith which is bitter. Extract the juice from the lemons to produce 1/2 cup (120ml) of juice. Cut the butter into small chunks.

Put eggs, zest, sugar, and salt into cooled sauce pan. Whisk ingredients in pan till frothy and light in color (a minute or two). Add lemon juice and whisk 30 seconds. Add butter chunks. Set pan on stove burner, turn on heat to medium-to-low, and start whisking contents so they don’t coagulate or stick to bottom of pan. Whisk constantly till butter melts and mixture thickens, then whisk another two minutes, but do not let mixture boil – it should be quite steamy (185°F, 85°C).

There’s a spot in the original recipe about here concerning the option to strain the lemon zest out of the gloop before jarring it up and letting it chill in the fridge, but I don’t believe in that. Pour mixture from bowl into jar to within 1/4 inch (0.75cm) from top, taking care not to get mixture on rim, then seal jar with lid. Refrigerate to thicken the product further.

Chicken Piccata

This one got overhauled, too. See, Cliff and I are sort of what I like to call ‘sauce pigs.’ When I make something with a sauce that goes over rice or pasta or something, I tend to like A LOT of sauce. And I’m getting better at sauces, too. So it was time to update this one and we were very pleased with the outcome.

1 lb. boneless, skinless chicken breasts, lightly pounded and cut into strips
4 T flour
1/2 t salt
1/2 t pepper
3 T olive oil
1 t oregano
1/4 c white wine
1/2 c lemon juice
1 c chicken stock
1/2 t tarragon
Capers
1 T cornstarch
1 T water

Heat oil in a large deep skillet over medium high heat. Mix flour, salt, pepper and oregano in a shallow bowl, then dredge chicken through flour mixture and brown on both sides. Remove chicken from pan and set aside. Reduce heat to medium, scrape up browned bits on bottom of pan and deglaze with white wine, cooking for 2-3 minutes, then add lemon juice, chicken stock, tarragon and capers to pan. Bring sauce to a boil, then simmer for 5 minutes. Mix cornstarch and water to a slurry, then add to sauce, stirring frequently until sauce thickens. Return chicken to pan to warm until ready. Serve over angel hair pasta.