Hedonia

Conserved lemons, cont'd

You know what? I'm not going to be one of those bloggers that states the obvious, noting that I haven't gotten around to blogging for the past few days. Nor am I going to be apologetic or contrite about it. Nope, not me.

Anyway, I haven't had much to report, certainly culinarily, and I've been damn busy it seems. Sunday's tour went very well, even with the throngs of people in the park. (Bravi Azzurri!) In fact, it added a nice element to the tour. I felt like I was being cheered on by the masses. Go Sean!

Meanwhile, the conserved lemons have slowly deflated due to the combined power of salt and periodic pressure. Today was day six, the point at which you cover with oil. And now we wait. For a month. Time to start planning a Moroccan feast in mid-August!

No matter. They smell fantastical, sweet and lemon-tangerine-y, like Froot Loops. Really salty Froot Loops. I can hardly wait for the final product.

When life gives you lemons...

Conserve them!

My friend Greg, his girlfriend and his brother recently purchased a home one scant block from my place. In their backyard is a glorious, well-established Meyer lemon tree, positively exploding with lemons. For weeks, I procrastinated dropping by to raid it, but finally had the occasion last week. I brought home a healthy bag full of petite and extremely fragrant yellow fruit.

A few went straightaway into an infusion. Knowing from past experience that the pith makes for a very unpalatable infusion, I just barely zested a couple of the lemons into a container, then set about supreming the fruit. As these are seriously tiny things, and the segments are quite thin indeed, it took nearly surgical precision to extract a few fleshy slices of pulp. But the deed is done, and there will hopefully be a small burst of lemony liquor in my near future. (No pic of the infusion -- it's not exacly photogenic right now.)

But the other thing I've been wanting to do with lemons is conserve them. I do like to make Moroccan/North African dishes from time to time, and it is the one ingredient I am always without. You can substitute fresh, but it just doesn't have the same zing. Besides, I think it will make a fabulous addition to nearly any recipe, regardless its provenance.

Pretty much all the research I've done on making conserved lemons says the same thing, but I did find one handy resource that came with photos here. And, so, that is pretty much the recipe I'm going to stick to. This is not instant-gratification food, though; I've got a month ahead of me, and several steps along the way, before I'll get to enjoy these babies. Luckily, I am a patient man.

Vodka infusions: Watermelon, part 2

Because my watermelon infusion experiment was predicated on the assumption that the melon's flavor is extremely delicate and easily overpowered by underlying flavors, I began tasting at the three-day mark, fully two days earlier than I normally do with fresh infusions. On that day, all I tasted was vodka and sugar. Days four and five were little changed, and by day six I figured it had gotten to wherever it was going, so I strained.

On the bright side, it tastes nothing at all like cantaloupe (as was my concern). On the other hand, it tastes little like watermelon, either. DPaul insists he can taste watermelon, and I suppose I can, too, but it's certainly ... subtle.

It is a lovely blush color, though, and some of the pulp of the fruit even managed to work its way through the coffee filter, which is unusual. Speaking of the pulp, I of course tasted it post-strain, and the verdict is: Blargh! Rather than firming up the texture, as was the case with the other infusions, the spent watermelon was flabby, like too-old raw beef, and utterly devoid of flavor.

So. We'll see how it fares when chilled. I'm sure it will be lovely in some lemonade or a cosmo or something. This much I know -- I went through the trouble to infuse it, strain it and make a fastidious little label for it, so it's sure as hell going to get drunk. So I guess I know what I'm bringing to July 4 festivities!

Vodka infusions: Watermelon, part 1

Typical of me and DPaul, we managed to skip all the big stuff this past Pride weekend. No parade, no parties ... we even missed Pink Saturday, which we rarely if ever do. It's not that we didn't do our fair share of fun things over the weekend, it's just that most of them didn't involve being surrounded by thousands of drunk gays and lesbians. It did, however, mainly involve being surrounded by just a handful of drunk people at any given time. Oddly enough, come to think of it, we were mainly surrounded by drunk straight people. Hm, whatev.

Anyway, the point is that on the night of Pride proper, we had a few friends over, and I was too damned drunk lazy to make dessert. While at the market, I saw watermelons and thought, perfect!

I'm guessing this year's wacky weather was not so impactful on melons, because the box of watermelons outside Bell was full of gargantuan beasts bigger than basketballs. It wasn't until I got home and checked the receipt that I realized I had just hefted home 15 lbs of fruit. On my shoulder, like a second head. For three blocks. Oy.

It's a good thing I didn't actually *make* dessert, because Jim & Matthew showed up with a box of goodies from Tartine. Well, that beats watermelon any day! Unfortunately, I was left with a fridge full of juicy red fruit. (Which I had to quarter just to get it into the fridge!)

I didn't really get watermelon until about two years ago. I loved all other melons, and it's not that I didn't like watermelon, I just thought of it as the pedestrian filler fruit of the melon world. But then, one summer, I had a few remarkable watermelon preparations and the lightbulb went off. Most memorable was the watermelon sorbet in cucumber soup with pink peppercorns at Aziza, which I promptly recreated for DPaul's birthday that year. Yum.

Now, we have done infusions of several melons in the past, watermelon included. Disappointingly, they all turned out tasting just like cantaloupe. Not that there's anything especially wrong with that. I love cantaloupe. But when you put watermelon in and get cantaloupe back, well, you're disappointed.

This time will be different, I thought. As I have such a monstrous surplus of watermelon, I can be selective, only using the juiciest, reddest, watermeloniest part for infusion. The rest of it, well, more on that later.

So, gentle readers, my hope is that, by using only the choicest bits, I can extract enough pure watermelon essence to overcome the evidently overpowering cantaloupiness that lies within. Stay tuned!

Vodka infusions: Cucumber and lychee, part 2

Folliwing Saturday's foray into vodka infusions, I took my own advice and tasted on the fifth day. Good thing, too, as I think they were pretty much done at that point. So I got down my trusty Melitta cone and filters, which happens coincidentally to fit so very well with the top of my Tupperware measuring cup, and set to work.

Draining the lychees was entertaining, as the fleshy white meat with pinkish streaks immediately made me think of lobster meat, which was not quite the effect I was going for. Somewhat to my surprise, the lychee infusion did not turn out milky white, but rather faintly golden and opalescent. Luckily, it does not smell or taste like lobster. Rather, the bouquet is slightly funky (as lychees are), but the flavor is full-on sweet lychee. Very nice indeed.

The cucumber seems good at first pale. I did not have cute containers at the ready when I strained off the infusions yesterday (d'oh), so I just had them in the fridge until this afternoon. The acid test for the cuke infusion will be when it's frozen, to see whether those fabulous ice crystals form.

I did try a sip of the two blended together. That has potential! I'll try it when they're both frozen.

I tasted the spent flesh of both fruits, as I always do. Naturally, they taste like booze, and to a lesser extent like the produce they are. But interestingly, the vodka appears to have a pickling effect on it, as the flesh comes out denser, tougher and crisper. I'm sure there are some significant culinary applications for vodka-pickled fruits and veggies. All I've ever done with them in the past is blend them with ice for a quick summer cocktail. Alas, for now, I'll merely have to continue dreaming up recipes for liquor-soaked lychees; I sent it down the drain. Eat up, little fishies!

A few more pics, including closeups of the lobster meat lychee flesh and obligatory cutesy label, after the jump.

Vodka infusions: Cucumber and lychee, part 1

DPaul and I have been doing vodka infusions for several years now. Over the years, we've experimented with a wide variety of ingredients and methods, with varying degrees of success. But of all the infusions we've done, the consistent winner has been cucumber. This came as much a surprise to us as anyone, figuring that more obvious flavors like citrus, berries or vanilla (being, as they are, commercially available) would be the standouts. Mais non.

Once you've infused your own vodka, you'll think twice about buying flavored vodka. The flavors and aromas you get from a handmade product are far more genuine and nuanced than commercially produced brews. In the case of cucumber, you definitely get a big, fresh explosion of cucumber flavor, but moreover you get discrete notes individually distilled -- floral, melony, grassy -- that harmonize like a perfectly struck chord. But best of all, if your balance is exactly right, the frozen vodka forms gorgeous sheets of ice crystals that crash on the tongue when you drink it. It's an incredible experience.

There is no precise recipe, just a few rules of thumb: For fresher ingredients, like fruits or herbs, you need a higher ratio of infusable to vodka, and a shorter steeping time. For drier ingredients, like spices, it's a lower ratio of infusable to vodka and a longer time to steep.

A few notes from past infusions:

• If you're going to do lemon or any other citrus, only use the zest and maybe some pulp; the pith is extremely bitter, and will overpower the flavor of the vodka.
• Vanilla, cinnamon and other dry spices work extremely well and can be left in to steep for quite a while. We once left a cinnamon stick in so long that a slick of red oil ultimately rose to the top of the infusion.
• By contrast, fresh ingredients require a lighter hand. Sometimes if you go too long, you'll surpass the sublime flavor of the ingredient and begin drawing bitter and off flavors.
• Star anise creates a lovely golden-hued infusion with a potent licorice flavor. And when you pour it over ice, it turns opaque white instantly. Neat!
• Fruits must be fully ripe, or you will only get tartness and bitterness. Adding sugar to the end product only results in syrupy texture.

For this attempt at cucumber, I used two standard cucumbers, peeled and seeded. If you are using garden-fresh, organic cucumbers, feel free to leave the peel intact. It will give your product a charming green tint and a stronger grassy note. But the ones I got looked a bit waxy, so off they go. Don't worry too much if you don't get all the seeds out -- you do want the cucumber to impart just enough water to the infusion to allow for that magical ice crystal thing to happen. But if you left the seeds in, it would become too watery, and you end up with slush.

Chunk up the cuke, and put in an airtight container with enough vodka to cover, maybe a little more. In this case I used maybe up to 750 ml. Store in a cool, dry place for about seven days, but start tasting it at the five day mark. Strain with a coffee filter, and store the resulting infusion in the freezer for up to two or three months.

It wouldn't be any fun if we only did the same things over and over again. Today I came across some gorgeous lychees at the 24th/Valencia market, and so an experiment was hatched.

Peeling lychees is like peeling leathery, spiky hard-boiled eggs. But the milky, succulent interiors feels so nice while you're working with it. It's a bit messy getting the pits out, but worth it in the end. Already it's clear that the end product will be milky like the flesh of the fruit itself. A pic of the final carnage and infusion-in-process after the jump.

Update: Check out Martha from 2 Tasty Ladies's experiments in infusion!