Lip-Smacking Lemon Curd

Picture this:

You’ve been wanting to make lemon curd for weeks. After a lengthy search for just the right recipe, you find one that calls for the following:

• 2 eggs
• 2 tbsp. butter
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2/3 cup lemon juice
• 1 tbsp. lemon zest

The recipe yields 1 and 1/3 cups curd, which would be enough for you—but you’ve been invited to a dinner party tonight.  And the irrepressible overachiever within you thinks it would be a fabulous idea to surprise your host with sponge cupcakes, strawberries macerated in Grand Marnier and agave syrup, and some of that lemon curd.

Solution: double the ingredients, double the curd.  Easy enough.

But as you’re gathering all the elements, you realize you have only 3 eggs. And just under a cup of sugar. You find 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter (exactly!) wrapped in the fridge, but that’s all the butter you find.

You have laundry at various stages of washing and drying in the basement. You have not showered, and the bed hair you woke up with isn’t the sexy kind you can get away with outside the home. Four pots, each containing lunches and dinners for the week, are at various stages of cooking on the stove. The dinner party is less than 3 hours away, and it’s pouring outside.  You’re not particularly anxious to run to the grocery store, nor do you have time.

You could stop here, just bring the bottle of wine you told the host you’d bring to the party.  But you’ve been wanting to make lemon curd all week. And because the cake batter has been mixed—and you can’t very well serve a naked cupcake—there’s no turning back.

New plan: Make the curd, but just increase the ingredients by a third.

Again, easy enough. But you’ve forgotten how to add fractions. And you’re running out of time. Did I mention you really need a shower? The pot filled with black bean soup is bubbling over. The phone is ringing. It’s Mom. Those phone calls never last 5 minutes.  What do you do?

Stop thinking and cook.  And somewhere in between, just breathe.

RECIPE:

Tart Lemon Curd,

A Very Happy Accident by Yours Truly

bastardized from Cooking Light’s Lemon Curd (May 2000)

Ingredients:

• 3 large eggs
• 2 tablespoons lemon zest
• a scant cup of sugar
• 1 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (about 5 medium-large lemons’ worth)
• 2 tbsp. unsalted butter

Method:

Combine eggs, zest and sugar in a saucepan over medium-high heat, whisking constantly until sugar dissolves.  It’ll take about 3 minutes.

Stir in the lemon juice and the butter. Continue stirring, and cook until the mixture loosely coats the back of a spoon. It’ll thicken as it cools.

Transfer the curd to a bowl to cool for about 10 minutes. Then, get a piece of plastic wrap big enough to cover the bowl. Poke a few holes in it, and then place the plastic wrap directly on top of the curd. This prevents condensation from forming, but more importantly it prevents a thick, rubbery skin from forming on the curd (note: this applies to any hot/warm pudding or custard).  Refrigerate.

Once the curd is [mostly] chilled, you can transfer it to a glass jar. It keeps for about a week—if it lasts that long. You’ll get about 16-20 servings from this recipe, assuming each serving is about 2 tablespoons. (In which case, it’s 2 Weight Watchers Points Plus per serving.)

A couple of notes on taste…

This curd is ideal for spooning over a sponge cake, a croissant, sweet bread or macerated berries; or, mixing it with yogurt and granola.  You could call it “tart”, but I like to think the limited sugar helps to preserve the integrity of the lemon’s punch and zing. Tracie, who hosted the dinner party, loved the stuff, as did our friend Liz. My boyfriend found the curd a bit too tart. If your sweet tooth needs a little more sweet, add more sugar. Or, you could just follow the original recipe.

Sunday Cooking Wrap-Up: When One Ingredient Makes All The Difference

My day began with a minor disaster—and a lesson: don’t attempt to separate eggs without being properly caffeinated first.  After 5 wasted eggs and 2 cups of coffee, I successfully separated nine eggs and made an angel food cake for my father.

While the cake was in the oven, I prepared a savory experiment for my boyfriend—an ultimately successful adaptation of David Tanis’s Orecchiette al Forno (you can find the recipe here).  My adaptation may qualify as a new dish entirely—I didn’t use orecchiette, and I didn’t bake the dish, so we can cross out the “al forno”. This is how it turned out:

Conchiglie Rigate with Broccoli Rabe, Sausage & Ricotta

Instead of orecchiette, I used conchiglie rigate (ridged shells), a sturdy pasta that holds up to reheating and even better—has the perfect concave shape to trap bits of sausage and sauce, so the all the flavors really get into the pasta.  Before preparing a container of this lovely dish for a surprise delivery, I stole a few bites. (Okay, more than a few.) I think my boyfriend will be happy.

So after making a cake for dad and pasta for my boyfriend, it was time to make something for myself.  On chilly & rainy days like today, the only thing I want is soup.

I cooked some beans, gathered and chopped my veggies, and defrosted my chicken stock—all the makings of a hearty soup. But I wanted a little something extra. Not heat or spice or meat, but a something fresh with a nice pop.

Enter pesto. A little bit of pesto sauce does what dried herbs cannot do—add the sweet zing of fresh basil, garlic & extra virgin olive oil in one concentrated shot.  Plus, it turns average soup into something fancy-sounding: Soup al Pistou. Oui!

Vegetable Soup al Pistou

Adapted from WeightWatchers.com

Time: 45 minutes

Serves: 4 (about 1.5 cups soup/serving)

Ingredients:

• 3 carrots, chopped
• 3 stalks celery, chopped
• 1/2 large onion, chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, smashed
• 1 tbsp. olive oil
• 2 tsp. salt, divided
• 1 quart chicken stock
• 1.5 cups cooked cannellini beans, with a 1/2 cup cooking liquid (or just used canned)
• 1/2 cup fresh or frozen green peas
• 1 medium zucchini, chopped
• 3/4 cup diced tomatoes (with their liquid)
• 2 cups baby spinach
• freshly ground pepper
• 4 heaping teaspoons pesto sauce
• grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese (for topping)

Method:

Heat a large pot over medium high heat. Add oil, swirl to coat. Next, add carrots, celery, garlic and 1 teaspoon salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, for about 10 minutes, or until the vegetables are soft.

Add chicken stock, raise the heat and bring the mixture to a boil. Stir in beans, peas, zucchini, and tomato. Allow mixture to cook at a rapid simmer (you don’t want a rolling boil) for another 10 minutes. Add spinach, stirring into the soup until it’s wilted. Remove the pot from the heat, add the other teaspoon of salt and freshly ground pepper to your taste.

Divide soup into 4 bowls. Spoon a heaping teaspoon of pesto on top of each bowl, following with the grated cheese.  Have a seat, a sip of wine, and stir up your soup. Enjoy with a piece of warm, crusty bread. Voi-la!

 

Note – If you’re dining alone like me, and want to save the rest of the soup for lunch and dinner during the week, refrigerate the soup (without the pesto or cheese) within two hours of cooking. It’ll keep for 4-5 days. Add the pesto and grated cheese when you reheat the soup.

Weight Watchers Points Plus Value

• 5 per serving

A Perfect Meal to Kick Off Spring: Pasta with Fresh Ricotta, Herbs & Spinach

Pappardelle with Baby Spinach, Herbs & Ricotta

Do you ever find that there is a certain food you love that you can’t keep in the house, because once it’s there in plain sight—staring at you, tempting you—you’ll throw any willpower or sense of portion control out the window and eat the whole thing?

I call these danger foods. For my boyfriend, it’s Nutella. For my father, it’s pound cake. For me, it’s fresh ricotta cheese. (And we can add fresh mozzarella, burrata, St. Andre, drunken goat, and Taleggio to that list.) I can’t keep cheese around because I can’t just have one slice. I must have more. I must have it all.  But because I’m not a big fan of feeling shame and stomach cramps, I don’t keep it around.

I made an exception this weekend and bought a container of freshly made ricotta at Fairway. And though I have at several points this weekend stolen a spoonful from said container, I had enough willpower to set aside plenty of this precious cheese to prepare a recipe I’d been meaning to make for a whole year: Pappardelle with Baby Spinach, Herbs and Ricotta.  A photo of this dish graced the cover of the April 2011 issue of Cooking Light, announcing the arrival of spring and a welcome break from root vegetables, casseroles and winter stews.  My, did it look pretty!

Spring had arrived, and I had fresh ricotta. Time to get cooking. But before I got started, I made a few substitutions.  Cooking Light’s recipe calls for fresh dill and chives—lovely herbs, but I associate them more with potato or cucumber salads, not pasta.  I elected to use fresh basil and oregano—bright and sweet with some peppery notes. And I kicked up the amount of ricotta from 1/3 cup to a heaping 1/2 cup. Why?

Why not.

RECIPE:

Pappardelle with Baby Spinach, Fresh Herbs & Ricotta

Adapted from Cooking Light, April 2010

Serves: 3 – 4

Total Time: 30 minutes; Active time 20 minutes

Ingredients:

• 8 oz. uncooked pappardelle pasta
• 1 tbsp. kosher salt
• 1 heaping 1/2 cup of fresh whole-milk ricotta cheese
• 3 cups baby spinach
• 1/3 cup fresh oregano leaves
• 1/3 cup fresh basil leaves
• 1/3 cup fresh Italian parsley leaves
• 3 tbsp. freshly grated Pecorino Romano cheese
• 2 tbsp. olive oil
• 1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 tsp. kosher salt

Tools:

• Food processor (optional)

Method:

Set a large pot of water to boil on the stove; add salt and cover. Cook pasta according to package directions, taking care not to overcook.

While pasta is cooking, place spinach in the food processor and pulse a few times to lightly chop. Set spinach aside. Add basil, oregano and parsley to food processor; pulse until chopped (but not minced). Add to the spinach. (If you don’t have a food processor, no worries—use a sharp knife for the chopping, and mind your fingers!)

Once the pasta is finished cooking, set aside about 1 cup of the cooking water before draining.

Return pasta to the pot. In a small bowl, whisk together the ricotta with about a 1/2 cup of the cooking water. Add to the pasta. Next, add the chopped herbs and spinach, olive oil, Pecorino, salt and pepper. Toss gently to combine, and add additional cooking water if the mixture is too dry.

Divide into 4 bowls and serve immediately. Eat slowly, and savor the start of spring.

Note:

Pappardelle are wide-ribbon pasta. If you can’t find pappardelle, fettuccine works well in this recipe. And though I love fresh pasta, I find dried pasta holds up better here.  

Weight Watchers Points Plus Information:

• 10 Points Plus per serving (and worth every one!)

Need to use Leftover Buttermilk? Try Blueberry Muffins with Crunchy Cinnamon Topping

Have you ever bought a quart of buttermilk, only to use a half-cup for a recipe and then completely forget that said buttermilk is in your fridge?  Then one day, you find the buttermilk, open the carton and gag, only to throw the aged lumpy mess away?

Yep, I’ve been there. And the last time I found myself with leftover buttermilk in the fridge, I was determined not to let it go to waste.

So, the experiments began.

I used the buttermilk in place of butter & cream in cheesy mashed potatoes (success), as a soaking liquid for chicken that I ultimately breaded and oven-fried (success again), and mixed some into my parsnip & apple smash (a delightful success). But because a little buttermilk goes a long way, I still had some left. What to do?

I remembered a buttermilk berry cake recipe I read last summer on Creamed Butter, a blog written by my friend Andrew’s fiancé, Adrienne.  The cake looked delicious and the recipe was so simple I dubbed it “Lazy Summer Cake”—it requires so little effort, and though it’s not fancy, it’s incredibly satisfying and a great way to showcase the marvelous berries of summer.

I didn’t really feel like making a cake, but revisiting the recipe gave me an idea: muffins. The great thing about muffins is that they’re perfectly portioned, not to mention portable, which makes a muffin an ideal breakfast on a busy morning. As you’ll see from the pictures on Creamed Butter, the cake is pretty light, but it’s not high-rising, so I had to do a little tinkering to make the cake recipe muffin-friendly.

For starters, I substituted the all-purpose flour with cake flour (an easy sub is included below).  I made sure to sift the cake flour a few times until I had a pile of snowy, feathery light powder—ideal for a delicate crumb and a generously puffed muffin top. I kept the rest of the proportions in the recipe the same, except for the berries—I used a pint of blueberries—then folded them into the batter instead of placing them on top. You could use less berries, but I like muffins with a lot of fruit.  Finally, I prepared a crunchy topping of oats, cinnamon, sugar and crushed sliced almonds.

The result is a portable, pretty and satisfying treat perfect for breakfast or to kill the mid-afternoon slump—and unlike most coffee shop muffins that are lead-weight and huge, you a muffin that won’t give you carb coma. At first bite, you’re greeted by the warmth of the cinnamon sugar and the crunch of the oats & almonds, followed by the pop of juicy blueberries & the hint of lemon in this gently sweet cake. Bliss.

Now go make some.

RECIPE:

Buttermilk Blueberry Muffins

Adapted from Creamed Butter, Summer Buttermilk Berry Cake

Time: 40 minutes

Tools:

• Electric mixer
• Fine mesh strainer (for sifting flour)
• Mortar & pestle (for topping)
• 12-muffin pan
• 12 muffin cups

Ingredients

For the muffins:

• 1 cup cake flour*
• ½ tsp. baking powder
• ½ tsp. baking soda
• ¼ tsp. salt
• 4 tbsp. unsalted butter, softened
• 2/3-cup sugar
• ½ tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 egg
• zest of 1 lemon
• 1/2 cup buttermilk
• 1 pint fresh blueberries

For the Topping (all measurements are approximate):

• ¼ cup rolled oats
• 2 tbsp. sugar
• ½ tsp cinnamon
• 1 1/2 tbsp sliced almonds

* One cup cake flour = 1/8 cup cornstarch and 7/8 cup all-purpose flour. The easiest way to do this is to put 2 tablespoons cornstarch into a dry measuring cup, spoon flour in to fill the rest and level off. Mix with a fork or whisk before sifting.

Method:

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. Place paper cups in muffin pan, and spray the cups lightly with non-stick cooking spray if you have it. (If not, no big loss.)

Combine the ingredients of the topping into a small bowl, then use your mortar & pestle to grind the oats and almonds down a bit as they mix with the cinnamon and sugar. Set aside.

Sift the cake flour once into a medium bowl. Add baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Sift two more times and set aside.  In a separate bowl cream the butter and sugar until fluffy.  Then beat in the egg, followed by the vanilla and lemon zest, until all are fully incorporated.

Alternating the flour and the buttermilk, mix with the butter/sugar/egg mixture until just combined, beginning and ending with the flour.  Gently fold in the blueberries with a wooden spoon or a spatula.

Use a spoon to fill each cup about 2/3 full, then spread the tops until they’re even.  Use a clean spoon to sprinkle the topping on each cup of batter. You’ll have enough to coat the surface of each one.

Bake for 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of one of the middle muffins comes out mostly clean (if it’s got blueberry juice on it, that’s a good thing.)

Eat warm or at room temperature, with a cup of tea or mug of coffee.  If you’re prepping breakfast for the week, allow the muffins to cool completely before wrapping each individually with plastic wrap, placing into a zip-top bag and then putting them into the freezer.

Voi-la!

PS – Weight Watchers Points Plus per muffin: 4!

PPS – This is my 50th post!

Sweet Tooth: Pumpkin Pie Pudding (Yes, in February. Just because.)

Hi. I am delicious. What's your name?

Pumpkin may be in season in the fall, but any time I’ve cooked with pumpkin I used the canned stuff.  This is unusual for me—given the option I almost always go with fresh ingredients.  But cutting, peeling and cooking a fresh pumpkin is a job—and when you’re pressed for time, as most of us are, going with the canned stuff is a great option. You end up with better consistency, and so long as you’re using a canned pumpkin without any additives, it’s easy to feel like you’re eating it fresh.

Another excellent benefit of canned pumpkin? It’s available year round. And with the unseasonably warm weather we’ve been enjoying (and been baffled by), it seemed entirely appropriate to make Pumpkin Pie Pudding for dessert on Saturday.  I was hosting a dinner party and serving an accidentally autumnal menu: pomegranate pork tenderloin, roasted sweet potatoes & apple, and sautéed Tuscan kale.  When I considered dessert options, I remembered a favorite I had originally found in Cooking Light a couple years ago.

The recipe yields 4 perfectly creamy (yet cream-free) puddings that have all the flavor of  pumpkin pie filling but ultimately a much lighter texture.  I like to add a little crunch (and admittedly I missed the pie crust), so I topped each pudding with crumbled gingersnaps.  Spoon on a dollop of whipped cream—flavored with nothing more than a touch of vanilla—and you’ve got an aromatic and fancy-looking dessert.  It’s also ridiculously simple and surprisingly low in fat.

Needless to say, my dinner guests (the boyfriend, my friend Bujan and his fiancé Anne) weren’t really concerned with any of that stuff.  They were too busy eating and smiling.

RECIPE

Pumpkin Pie Pudding

Adapted from Cooking Light (October 2010)

Yummy!

Time:

• 15 minutes active time / 2-3 hours inactive time

Ingredients:

• 6 tbsp. sugar
• 2 tbsp. cornstarch
• 1 3/4 cup Skim Plus milk (or 1% milk, but do not use regular skim milk)
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 cup canned pumpkin (unsweetened, 100% pure)
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 3/4 tsp. pumpkin pie spice (or use 1/2 tsp. cinnamon, plus a dash each of ground allspice, clove, nutmeg and ginger)
• 1/8 tsp salt

For topping:

• 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
• 1 cup gingersnaps, smashed and crumbled

Method:

1. Combine 6 tablespoons sugar and 2 tablespoons cornstarch in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Combine milk and egg, stirring well with a whisk. Gradually add milk mixture to sugar mixture, stirring constantly, and bring to a boil. Cook for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat.
2. Combine pumpkin, vanilla, spice and salt in a bowl, stirring well. Slowly add pumpkin mixture to milk mixture, whisking constantly. Place pan over low heat, and cook for 3 minutes or until thoroughly heated, stirring constantly (do not boil). Divide pudding evenly among 4 dessert bowls and cover surface of pudding with plastic wrap. (Tip: poke holes in wrap before covering surface to let hot air escape). Chill for at least 2 hours.
3. Place gingersnap cookies in a zip-top bag, seal, and then smash the cookies into coarse crumbs using a mug or some heavy object you have laying around.  Best to place the bag on a dish towel so you don’t ruin your counter top when smashing.  This is the most fun part of this recipe.
4. Just before you are ready to serve, place the cream in a glass or stainless steel bowl and beat on high with a mixer until soft peaks form. Add vanilla and continue beating until stiff peaks form. Top each serving with a sprinkle of cookie crumbs, followed by a dollop of whipped cream, and then a second sprinkling of crumbs.  Ta-daa: dessert.

Weight Watchers Points Plus Information:

• Minus the gingersnap crumbs and whipped cream, each serving has a Points Plus value of 4