Cooking with Lemons (Part I) – Curd

Having completed and bottled the Plum Jam, the Chartwell Ladies next tackled the huge harvest of lemons. Lemons big, medium and small.

What to do with all these lemons? A large and very heavy Garby bagful. Google gave us at least 45 uses for lemon in one single article alone! After a lot of thought and even more discussion, the decision was made: Lemons Part I would consist of Lemon Curd and Lemon Preserve, while Lemons Part II would see an attempt at Lemon Cordial.

This post shows some of their labours at producing the Curd and the Lemon Preserve.

 
The first step in most recipes using Lemons is to extract as much juice as possible, without contaminating the supernatant fluid with the bitter pith. So, we set up a sort of conveyor belt system, starting with slicing and pricking the lemons, then juicing (fortunately with an electrical juicer – nice). The juice get strained in a multiple strain operation to minimise the bitter stuff as far as possible.

After combining the juice and sugar, the eggs are blended into the mix using a double-boiler set-up. This is the tricky bit, where the stirrer must get the consistency to the correct viscosity, without allowing the egg to scramble.

I think.

Or something like that: Don’t look at me – I had the technical engineering job of slicing the lemons. Oh, and slicing my left thumb slightly, leading to my retirement to the TV on sick leave for the rest of the evening. The lemon juice, by the way, did wonders for the wound.

Naturally, I couldn’t claim any involvement in the preparation of the Preserved Lemons, because of the unfortunate thumb incident, but I understand it consists of slicing lemons into 6 segments, removal of the excess pith and other white stuff, and then dabbing in salt, and finally packing in a sterilised jar as in the large one below.

I think. Or something like that.

The Lemon Preserve in the large jar on the left, the Lemon Curd (Yum) is in the centre bottle, and the Plum Jam in the jar on the right.