Have You Heard About the Curd?

By now I have decided that spring in New York means that it rains. A lot. All the time. So, since it is raining here today and I don't feel much like exploring, today's blog is going to be about the Meyer Lemon Curd that I made earlier this week...maybe if I write about a sauce that looks like sunshine, the sun will shine.

If you have never heard of Meyer lemons before they are a much sweeter type of lemons then the ones that we are used to and they also have a thinner skin and a smell that seems to be much orangier than normal lemons. They feel a lot softer and juicer than normal lemons too which is probably part of why they are normally abhorrently expensive; try $17.99 per pound at Mercato Market in Calgary, but here, on sale at Whole Foods, they were $1.99 per pound and at that price, gosh darn affordable. Now, I had other ideas of what to do with the lemons, I found recipes for marmalade and little lemon cakes but when I asked my chef what she thought Meyer lemons were best used in, she told me lemon curd. Since I figure chef has been around the block enough times to know best, I took her advice and found a recipe for lemon curd on epicurious.com (a wonderful website if you have never been, stop reading my blog and go now -- it's that good).


Meyer Lemons

Now, lemon curd has always been something that terrified me because it seemed pretty hard. I thought it involved cooking eggs and making custards and doing all sorts of things that seemed really easy to mess up and ruined the ingredients with -- but I found a recipe that changed all that. Basically, you take lemon zest, juice, butter, eggs and sugar and whisk them over a double boiler until they have visually and tangibly thickened and you have curd. The whole process took about 20 minutes and the results were incredibly tasty. I will include the recipe below but don't worry if you don't have Meyer lemons, just adjust the sugar a bit and keep the other variables the same and your product should turn out just dandy.

I used the curd on toast, in yogurt and on ice cream but you could easily put it into a tart shell or fill a cake with it. Just like the strawberry rhubarb syrup or the pastry cream, lemon curd is extremely versatile. Enjoy!

MEYER LEMON CURD

2 teaspoons of Meyer lemon rind, finely grated
1/2 cup of Meyer lemon juice (the original recipe claims that this should take three or four lemons but it took me five so maybe buy an extra just in case)
1/2 cup of granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 stick of unsalted butter (or half a cup) cut into pieces

Use a microplane grater to finely grate the zest off the lemons and then roll the lemons on the counter to allow them to release their juices. Slice the lemons and juice them over a strainer into a measuring cup. Then, combine the juice and zest with the eggs and whisk until the mixture is combined. Add the cut up butter and place the bowl over a pot of slowly boiling water making sure that your bowl doesn't touch the water. Immediately after placing the bowl over the water, start whisking the mixture and don't stop until the curd has thickened up (in the original recipe, the instructions told me to wait until the mixture measured 160F on an instant read thermometer but I did not find that at this point the curd was ready for me to stop cooking it so I kept going until the curd was about as thick as a creamy salad dressing). After the curd has thickened, use a spoon to force it through a fine mesh strainer -- this will strain out any of the egg bits that cooked and make for a smoother final product. After the straining step, you are pretty much done. I waited for my curd to cool just a touch but feel free to try it right away: but be warned, it is so creamy and delicious it will be hard for you to stop once you start!



The Final Product