When Life Gives You Lemons

You should make Lemon Cake...specifically Meyer Lemon Cake.

Imagine my surprise when wandering through my local Publix last Friday evening, foraging for dinner, when I saw a bin of Meyer lemons. I had heard of these mythical fruits, but had never seen them in a local store...at least not my local store. Once, when I was at the International Farmer's Market, I saw an empty bin marked "Meyer lemons," but there wasn't even a stem, twig, or leaf to show they were ever there.

Meyer Lemons are an citrus oddity. According to Wikipedia, they are named after Frank Meyer, an "agricultural explorer" for the State Department, who discovered them in China in 1908. They appear to be a cross between a lemon and a Mandarin orange, and it's easy to believe when you cut one open. It smells lemony with a faint hint of orange underneath. The juice is still tart, but the tartness is just a little bit different from your normal lemons...which are of several varieties--Lisbon, Eureka, etc. I'm not sure that I ever really thought about lemons being of different varieties, other than the Meyer ones, but this article breaks it down.

Anyway, I scouted around the 'net and found the recipe below for a lemon cake. I love lemon cake, lemon bars, all sorts of lemon desserts, but (and you knew there was one) I hate, hate, hate the artificial taste of lemon flavoring, especially in lemon drinks...artificial lemon flavoring is the absolute pits..no pun intended.

Meyer Lemon Cake
(from Domino magazine)


The Ingredients:
(makes one 9-inch cake)

8 tbsp. unsalted butter
4 large eggs, separated
1¼ cups sugar
2/3 cup buttermilk
1/3 cup Meyer lemon juice
1 tbsp. Meyer lemon zest
2 cups cake flour
1¼ tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt

For the glaze:

1/3 cup Meyer lemon juice
1 2/3; cups confectioners' sugar

For the candied Meyer lemon slices:

2 Meyer lemons
2 cups sugar

Preheat the oven to 325° F.

Melt butter in saucepan. Cool and set aside. In a mixing bowl, using an
electric mixer, beat egg yolks with 1 cup of the sugar until thick and light
in color, about 2 to 3 minutes.

Beat in buttermilk, Meyer lemon juice and zest. Sift together cake flour, baking powder and salt. In a separate bowl, beat egg whites with an electric mixer until they hold soft peaks. Then add the remaining ¼ cup of sugar and continue beating until stiff peaks form.

Fold half the flour mixture into egg-yolk mixture, followed by half the egg white mixture-so you don't deflate the batter. Repeat with remaining flour and egg white mixtures. Take about 1 cup of the batter and stir it into melted butter. Gently fold butter mixture into the rest of the cake batter.

Pour into a buttered and floured 9-inch cake pan or Bundt pan, and bake for about 50 to 60 minutes until cake is lightly brown and pulling slightly away from the edge of the pan.

While cake is baking, make glaze and candied Meyer lemon slices. For glaze, combine Meyer lemon juice and the confectioners' sugar in a saucepan. Heat, stirring occasionally, until sugar is dissolved. Set aside.

For the candied slices, cut Meyer lemons widthwise, in ¼ inch slices, and discard end pieces. Remove seeds. In a saucepan, combine 2 cups of water with 2 cups of sugar. Bring to a gentle boil and simmer five minutes. Add lemon slices and simmer about five more minutes, until fruit is soft but not falling apart. With a slotted spoon, remove slices and place on waxed or parchment paper.

When the cake is baked, cool in the pan for 5 minutes, and then invert onto a cooling rack. With a long toothpick, poke the top of the cake to make about two dozen small deep holes. Slowly spoon the warm glaze over the cake, allowing to sink in before adding more. Poke extra holes if needed, eventually using all the glaze. Arrange the candied lemon slices in a random
pattern on top. Cool the cake completely and serve.

Well, I punted the candied lemon slices, because I did the cake in a bundt pan and couldn't really figure out how to make them stay on the cake. I think my glaze was a little thick, because when I poked the holes, the glaze seemed to flow over the holes and not down into the cake. I'm thinking that doing a flat 9-inch cake would have been a better bet. And, I think it would be a great lemon cake with regular old run-of-the-mill lemons, too.

The whole folding of the ingredients was interesting...I was afraid that I was overmixing the ingredients, and the cake would deflate. It seemed to work out--the cake rose pretty high and light and deflated a little bit when it cooled. The Man pronounced it tasty, and the lemon flavor was good...I think it was better the 2nd day, after the lemon sort of soaked in more.

Sunday night, we watched the first episode of Top Chef's new season. Richard Blais of Atlanta is one of the cheftestants, and I'm kinda rooting for him. The second challenge--reinventing a classic dish--really provided some scream-at-the-tv-worthy moments. The one that really got my attention was when Andrew D'Ambrosi (New York, 30, Sous Chef, Le Cirque), aka the one that says the F-word a whole lot, announced he had no idea how to make mayonnaise. WTH?

If I remember correctly, I had to make mayonnaise during pantry class, which was in my 3rd quarter of culinary school. 3rd quarter! Not after I became a sous chef at Le Cirque! Makes me wonder how the hell he got the job, and why I'm not cooking at Le Cirque..maybe it's only because I'm not in New York. Ha!

(Come on--can't make mayo?! If you look at Le Cirque's menus, there's quite a few French things on it, and the French practically invented mayonnaise...how can he not know this, and even crazier, how can he admit it on national television? So, of course, I want him to fail miserably. Dude, lose the attitude!)

I must admit I like the little New Zealand guy, but then again, I am a sucker for the accent...and an accent + cooking = (well, I'm not going to tell you EVERYTHING, now am I?!)

It's Official...It's an Addiction

Last night, I ventured out of the house for a home party...specifically a Southern Living at Home party. Southern Living has very nice decorating stuff in their catalog, but most of it comes at a very nice price as well. There were a couple of things that really caught my eye for kitchen organization, but since I have about 3 square feet of counter space available, I regretfully had to pass. But, I got to hang out with people, eat party food, and have some scintillating conversation about a variety of "girl stuff."

Before I got to the hostess' house, I stopped by Mordors (aka Borders) for a quick time kill and to browse the new paperbacks. Like its competitor, Barnes & Chernobyl (you can figure that one out, can't you?), Borders has racks and shelves of bargain books in the entry way. I usually breeze on by these, because I've never really found anything worthwhile.

But, and you knew there was a but, this night was different. A sign caught my eye--"Take an Additional 50% Off the Sticker Price"--and it was posted over the bargain books. That "take an additional" option is a siren call...very hard to resist. So, I take a look...and what do I find hidden beneath the generic cookbooks with names like Vegetables, Appetizers, Make a Meal out of 3 Cans, are a couple of things that I just have to rescue from their bargain basement hell.

Rocco's 5 Minute Flavor--Rocco DiSpirito is so darned cute that having just the dust jacket to this book is going enliven my collection. Although, there are only a few pictures of Rocco on the inside, darn it. The blurb on the jacket promises "Fabulous meals with 5 ingredients in 5 minutes." We'll see. When giving the book a more thorough look-see, it looks like the "5 minutes" part is actual cooking time and doesn't include prep work, which is a good thing. If it were truly a "5-minute" meal, I would have been better off with the Meal out of 3 Cans cookbook.

Anthony Bourdain has bemoaned Rocco's fate on several occasions, berating him for selling out to the cult of celebrity and shilling for cat food, but he always comes back to the premise that Rocco is actually very talented and can really cook, which makes it all the more disheartening or shall we say, "dispirited?"

(And, upon even closer examination, it does not bode well for this book, when you see the following blurb on the back flap: Grab the Good Life! Get Rocco's recipes and Mama's cooking tips, as well as images and ringtones for your cell phone! Go to www.roccodispirito.com and click on Mobile now!" "Ringtones"? WTH? However, when you go to the site, I saw no Mobile link, which is good, but it doesn't look like the site has really been updated in awhile, which is sad. But, there's a ton of pictures of "His Cuteness," which is very good! Eating is also done with eyes, people! And, remember, I only paid 3 bucks for this book.)

The real gem of the shopping trip is the $3 find of Rick Bayless' Mexico One Plate at a Time. It's a companion to his PBS series of the same name. Bayless is pretty much the old man of Mexican cuisine in America, and seems to be fairly well thought of by his peers. (Although, Bourdain cracks on him for appearing in a Burger King ad.) He has a restaurant in Chicago, the Frontera Grill, and guess what? I have another Rick Bayless cookbook that I've never used! What are the odds of that? It's called Authentic Mexican: Regional Cooking from the Heart of Mexico. The link is for the 20th anniversary edition, and I actually have the 20-year-old version, which I've had for at least 10+ years. (I did mention that whole packrat facet of my personality, didn't I?)

The One Plate at A Time book seems to be more than just a cookbook. Along with the recipes, it has techniques and the results of the test kitchen's trials for the series. If nothing else, it will make for interesting reading.

I think I'll try something from Rick tonight...so, even though I didn't cook last night, I did buy cookbooks, and that's almost as good...isn't it?

(Ha! In looking through the One Plate book, I spotted a recipe for short ribs--Beef Short Ribs with Tomatoes, Roasted Poblanos, and Herbs, which is essentially the same thing I did night before last but with poblanos. If I decide to deal with short ribs again, I'm trying it Rick style!)

"My Confinement"

Things I have learned over the last few days while recovering from surgery:

1. No amount of painkillers can make anything that Sandra Lee does on Semi-Ho-made make any sense, sound appealing, or look appetizing. I'm watching her this afternoon, in my semi-drug induced stupor, and wondering who the hell does her set dressing? Is it someone who's doing a community service punishment? Why does her kitchen always match her outfit? She's got on some weird black velvet dirndl-style dress with funky cutouts, sort of like the goth version of Heidi, and the whole kitchen has a bunch of black hangings and decorations...is this some sort of Halloween episode? I'm not sure...maybe the obligatory cocktail will give me a clue. (Although, I must admit a great coveting of the fact that the woman has a different colored Kitchen Aid mixer for each of her shows.)

I saw her for about 5 minutes yesterday, and she and an equally bleached and Botoxxed friend were trying to make some appetizer thing...not sure what. The friend kept reaching up to smooth her hair back and then going back to manhandling food with her bare hands...food that was going directly on a platter to be served. Eeeww! (As my friend Kimma says, "taking that safety and sanitation course just ruined you!" I honestly don't care what you do in the sanctity and privacy of your own home--you can lick the tasting spoon and stick it back in the soup pot for all I care, but please don't let me see you do it, and for the love of Pete, don't do it on national television!!!)

And, can a person hold a knife more awkwardly than Sandra Lee does? I am so waiting for her to lop off a finger. That will make some wonderful You Tube video.

Oh, it's a Moulin Rouge-themed show. Who knew you could plan a whole dinner party around Moulin Rouge? The cocktail is some sort of layered weirdness involving raspberry vodka and Cool Whip. Yes, you read that right. Cool Whip and vodka. Seriously, how did this woman get on television? Does she have pictures of some high-ranked muckety muck at Food Network performing unnatural acts with a goat? A penguin? The piece de resistance? Her "chandalabra," which is a cross between a candelabra and a chandelier...which she has spray painted black, sprinkled with glitter, and draped with cheap Mardi Gras plastic beads. I could so do this show. Just give me a couple o' those Cool Whip Vodka shots, another painkiller or two, and I'm seeeeeet!

2. The movie, Enemy of the State, is frightening in its foreshadowing of the whole wire tapping of any and everybody...and it was filmed in 1998. Very scary.

3. The "Home" episode of The X-Files is just as disturbing now as it was when it first aired. (It's the one with the weird in-bred family that kept the mom under the bed. If you haven't seen it, don't. There's some things you are better off not knowing.)

4. Evidently, Magnum PI is out of syndication rotation, which is highly annoying. Damn WGN, Damn you!

5. The pilot episode of Charlie's Angels has been repackaged as a movie on the Mystery channel, and stars a young Tommy Lee Jones as our hero. And, once again, we realize that Jaclyn Smith has the best hair of any Angel. And, that I still harbor my childhood fantasy of being a glamorous LA private detective.

6. Okay, obviously I'm watching waaaay too much Food TV, but what the hell is up with Paula's Party? Paula seems to have lost her mind when she's in party mode...maybe she's been huffing those Cool Whip cocktails or something, but I much prefer her when she's in her Home Cooking withPaula mode.

7. I think my new favorite crush is The Barefoot Contessa. She's not afraid of full fat and is kinda fluffy herself. Although, she had a few sanitation violations yesterday, I chose to overlook them. And, even though Giada gets flack for her cleavage, I like her, too. She's calm and serene, and is also not afraid of butter. She also holds back on the extraneous hand waving and doesn't make up words...okay, I may have to take back the part about the hand waving. She is kinda waving around, but she's not doing the semaphoring thing that Rachael Ray does.

Back to bon bon eating and Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones...Episode I was not improved by painkiller consumption over the weekend, but I'm willing to give Episode II further consideration. Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan is a fine and wonderful addition to the afternoon.