Monday, October 11, 2010

Cuisine Fancy and Simple

Some months ago, I read a description of Meyer lemons. So appealing was the verbiage that when I saw Meyer lemons in my local grocery store in Vermont, I jumped at the opportunity to try them. After a brief web search, I decided to try making candied Meyer lemon rind and Meyer lemon syrup to go into Meyer lemonade.

Just finished up the candied rind. It is very nice…and a dead ringer for candied grapefruit peel, a classic Christmastime sweet of my childhood. Ha! Still, I’m thinking it is probably worth experimenting with candying different citrus peels, maybe combining them in a yeast bread, something like a stollen, but lighter. I wonder if the different peels would be different enough to be interesting.

Just another adventure in the kitchen.

Followup: I'll need to go back to the old time sugared peel recipe. With three times boiling and a closely watched syrup phase, it is more work, but the new fangled version turned damp and limp. The Meyer lemonade wasn't half bad, though.

Followup 2 Well, huh. After a day of exposure to open air, the short-cut, new version of candied lemon peel was almost as good as the labor-intensive old version. Time to re-think? Maybe so.

1 comment:

Philip Bouchard said...

For the past 15 years I've been living in Silicon Valley near San Jose, California -- and in each of the 4 houses where I have lived here, there has been a lemon tree in the back yard. I have really appreciated these lemon trees. Every 2 or 3 days I go through a pitcher of homemade lemon tea. And I squeeze lemon juice onto or into quite a few different foods.

In two of the houses I had a giant old Eureka lemon tree in the backyard. In the other two houses I had a tiny little Meyer lemon tree. Despite the fact that I constantly hear people rave about Meyer lemons, I actually preferred the Eureka lemons -- at least for my usual recipes. However, it was probably just a matter of finding some new recipes where the Meyers would be appropriate.

Anyway, two months ago I moved out of my last house and put all my belongings into storage. So for the first time in 15 years I can't go out back to pick fresh lemons!