Limoncello - The Long Alcohol Bath

In this second blog of the Limoncello series we meet Kathe and start the long alcohol bath. Read the first post in this series Limoncello - The Lemons to catch up on the process.

The story really begins last year when Kathe and her husband Bill took a trip to Italy. The focus was not art, history or architecture but it was food. They had cooking classes, they ate and they drank.

This tea towel is a souvenir of their adventure. When they arrived back in Hawaii, Kathe set out on a Limoncello Mission. She searched for limoncello recipes both in cookbooks and on the web. She used her selected recipe and made her first batch for the 2009 holiday season. The second batch begins today.

Kathe takes the lemon zest, that came from the growing grounds at the lanikai green house, and puts them in a large glass jar with a tight fitting lid.

This jar was made for ice tea and has a handy dispenser that will be useful in a few months when the completed limoncello is put in small bottles. The zest from the 20 lemons nearly fills the jar.

This is the part where you have to make sure that you extinguish all open flames. Everclear grain alcohol is made by Luxco. For this recipe Kathe uses 151 proof but is is available in 190 proof. It appears that in Hawaii the strongest proof available is the 151 proof. It does the trick.

The recipe calls for one 750 ml bottle each of Everclear and vodka. But for this batch Kathe used one full bottle of Everclear and for the second bottle a mix of leftover Everclear and vodka. This batch should pack a bit more punch!

After Kathe gives the jar a good shake, the waiting process begins. From her research Kathe has found that the wait should be a minimum if one week but the longer the zest bathes in the alcohol the better the flavor.

This batch of lemon zest will get a four month bath. I brought the jar back to the lanikai green house and will put it in our cellar. I will give it a shake every once in a while. When Kathe returns to Hawaii in few months she will start the next step in the process: Limoncello - How Sweet It Is.

Limoncello - The Lemons

Our neighbor Kathe gave us some homemade limoncello when she came to the Our Better Angels Meet Anew party last month. Limoncello, ice cold from the freezer, erupts with the essence of lemon zest as the alcohol warms the back of the throat.

We decided that after the holidays to harvest some of our Meyer lemons and work with Kathe to make a new batch of limoncello. Her recipe call for the zest of 20 lemons. Our trees were so heavy with fruit we thought the branches would break.

Meyer lemons are not like the Eureka lemons sold in most markets. They have thin skins that are very aromatic and the juice is not as acidic. The reason that you do not see more Meyer lemons in the store is that they do not transport very well. The thin skins do not hold up to the normal citrus packing operations. As a result when you do see Meyers lemons in the store, expect to pay over $5.00 per pound. The large lemons in this tree weigh about one half a pound each.

We figured that if we bought Meyer lemons for this batch of limoncello at our local Foodland Market, eight pound of lemons would have set us back about $40.00. Lucky we have our orchard. We decided to use the table outside to prepare the lemons. We did not want the lemon juice to add any more patina to our Carrera marble counters.

Percy checks out the lemons.

Percy decides that the beauty of the lemons is no match for his eyes.

Here in Lanikai you can cook outdoors in the middle of winter. Brr, it got down to the low 70's this morning. Here I am using a OXO vegetable peeler. Kathe lent me this tool and it works great. She told me not to use my Microplane zester. Her recipe calls for larger pieces of zest.

I still remember the time in New Orleans that the chef prepared Crepes Suzette at the table for us. With an orange on a fork he used a knife to quickly carve a long spiral of zest. The zest was then drenched in Grand Marnier and lit. The flaming essence of orange zest covered our crepes. I remember food highlights for a long time. We had that desert over 20 years ago.

After a short while using Kathe's great OXO peeler, I have a platter full of the zest of 20 Meyer lemons.

We had been thinking of what to do with all the lemons. I decided to go out an buy an ice cube tray and freeze the juice, then Kathe offered to let me borrow her ice cube tray. She thought of the same solution when she made limoncello before.

But first I had to juice 20 lemons. The tool I like is the Williams Sonoma citrus juicer. This tool can adjust for both lemons and limes. The only problem was that the supersized 1/2 pound lemons had to be cut into quarters to fit in the tool.

The lemons yielded close to 3 quarts of juice. We will have to fill this tray 3 or 4 times to create our Meyer Lemon Juice Cubes. They will add a touch of summer to our long winter here in sunny and warm Lanikai.

We will freeze the lemon pulps on a tray and then keep them in the freezer as well. Toss one in the garbage disposal for a fresh lemon scent.

Tune in for the next posting: Limoncello - The Long Alcohol Bath.

Our Better Angels Meet Anew

The sky was full of activity four days before the party. It went from light rain to clear sunshine back and forth many times all afternoon. The day ended with one of the best sunsets we have seen in Lanikai.

The invitations had been delivered and we watched the sky and the weather reports. Would there be rain or sunshine?

Then a couple of days before the party the wind picked up and the rain started. The storm moved in from the south and the rain was blown horizontal.

Late in the night a forty foot tall eucalyptus tree behind our house was knocked over by the wind. The saturated ground could not hold the roots against for the power of the wind. The crash of the tree was just one of the many sounds that made it a restless night.

After hours of clean up we again wondered would there be rain or sunshine for the party whose invitations announced - "Our Better Angels Meet Anew". We just went ahead with the preparations.

Our menu was a secret but there was definitely a theme. We would have:

• Olives
• Bread, Baked Brie
• Asparagus
• Mustard
• Andouille and Almonds

The weather eased up enough to let the party go ahead as planned. The only adjustment was that we decided use the cast iron grill inside instead of the Weber.

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You know what the president-elect would say by now, "Enough with the drama, let's get on with the recipes."

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Grilled Asparagus with a Meyer Lemon Cream Sauce

We used local grown asparagus from Twin Bridge Farms in Waialua. Toss the cleaned and trimmed asparagus in a bowl with virgin olive oil and salt. Spread out on a hot grill. Rotate to the other side once char marks are evident. When the asparagus starts to get limp, remove them from the heat and place in a bowl and promptly chill in the refrigerator to stop the cooking.

The sauce is made from sour cream, Meyer lemon juice and zest, honey and a bit of ground dried coriander. Just before serving use a spoon to drip the sauce across the asparagus. Since this is finger food leave the thick end without any sauce.



Andouille Sausage on French Bread

This dish starts with Cajun Style Andouille sausage from Bruce Aidells. Slice the sausage into 1/4" thick pieces on a diagonal. One package should yield about forty slices. Cook the slices on a hot grill for about one minute each side.

The bread comes from La Brea Bakery which is baked daily at Foodland in Kailua. We used their French Baguette since it is a bit softer than the sour dough. Slice the baguette 1/4" thick slices.

The back story on La Brea Bakery bread. Kathleen and I had a chance to visit Campanile Restaurant and La Brea Bakery before it opened in 1989. The pastry chef Nancy Silverton developed a baking process that nearly replicates bread from their original location in Los Angeles.

On with the recipe. Place one warm slice of andouille on each slice of bread and top with a 1/4 teaspoon of Old Style Maille mustard.

Almond & Meyer Lemon Biscotti

This holiday season is the debut of our new bakery treat, the almond & Meyer lemon biscotti. Those in the know will be able to pick up a bag or two at the Lanikai Craft Fair on December 6th. The sale opens at 9:00 a.m. so get there early.

We used a recipe from The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters. The recipe calls for almonds and anise and gives the option of using more lemon zest in lieu of the anise.

It made sense to accent the Meyer lemons from our garden. In the end after running a test batch we doubled the amount of lemon zest.

There is more to this recipe selection. While at UC Berkeley with Kathleen, I arranged for Kip Mesirow to teach an upper division class in the Department of Architecture in the College of Environmental Design. Kip taught traditional Japanese wood joinery. I later started doing some woodworking for Kip. One of his projects at that time was the Chez Panisse restaurant that was co-founded by Alice Waters.

I made the wood countertop below the book in this photograph using the Stanley 45 wood plane that I purchased when I was working with Kip in 1975. I used the plane to cut the groove for the oak splines that join the native Hawaiian ohia wood boards.



The list of ingredients for the biscotti is quite simple. Almonds, lemon zest, eggs, sugar, flour and baking powder. I learned a new trick from this recipe. Use room temperature eggs. This will cut in half the amount of time and arm fatigue necessary to whisk the eggs enough to create a "ribbon".

We used the Blue Diamond almonds instead of roasting raw almonds. The unsalted Oven Roasted almonds that come in these double sealed jars have a better crunch than almonds from a metal can.



To chop nuts I like to use a mezzaluna knife and chopping block. This way fewer nuts get lost in the process.



This is what the lemon zest looks like after using a Microplane. It is easy to get just the zest off without getting into the white portion of the lemon skin or into the red portion of your own skin!



After baking for about 25 minutes the cooled loaves are cut into 1/2 inch slices and baked again. Based on our test batch we decided to reduce the time for the second bake to only 5 minutes a side.



The biscotti are allowed to cool on a wire rack before packaging. They should stay fresh for about 3 to 4 weeks in a sealed container. We would not know as they do not last that long.






















We like to use labels for our products. It helps people know what to expect. Some bake sale items are sold with the comment "It looks good but I am not sure what it is". We use Avery labels created with the free DesignPro 5.4 software also from Avery. They were printed on our Cannon iP4500 inkjet printer.






















I put the labels on each Ziploc snack size bag before I inserted two biscotti. These will be a deal for the price they are sold at the Lanikai Association Craft Fair.



Finally we recycled a plastic container from the cheesecake we had for Thanksgiving to package the biscotti for sale at the fair. To dress things up a bit we used ti leaves from our garden to line the container. We hope those who are at the right place at the right time will enjoy our new holiday treat.

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The Lanikai Tea Room is never open to the public but it is full of creative energy.