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Kitchen Table Kibitzing 7/11/2023: When Tuesday Gives You Lemons, Make KTK [1]
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Date: 2023-07-11
Stanislawa de Karlowska: A Devon Farm (1916)
Good evening, Kibitzers!
I hope that everyone is safe from the various kinds of awful weather! It’s usually the westerners I worry about, and I know you all have been very hot. But this week, my main concern is whether BadWolffe has been getting washed away, along with everyone else in the Hudson Valley, Vermont, and places in between. Everyone please check in and say you’re okay! (Please be okay!)
I got started thinking about lemon when I watched the first video below, about no-bake lemon “souffle”. Not only did I start free-associating about lemons; so did YouTube, as demonstrated by the fact that the last video, Green Tambourine, was along the right side of the souffle’s page.
Lemon seemed like a nice theme for a summer diary, so I went with it. I learned that lemons and other citrus fruits arose somewhere in south or east Asia; the lemon is said to be an apparent hybrid of bitter orange and citron, but if you drill down on anything other than the citron, which appears to be the ur-citrus fruit, you will find quite a tangle. The Meyer lemon, for instance, is not really a lemon, but a cross between a citron and a hybrid of the mandarin and pomelo. “Regular” lemons in US supermarkets are a variety called “Eureka lemons”.
Lemons seem to have entered Europe in the time of ancient Rome “near southern Italy” (I’m just assuming Sicily — everybody came through Sicily with all their stuff). That was sometime before 200 CE, but it took Europeans 1200 years to figure out they could grow them locally. They were literally carried over here by Columbus shortly after that, and here we are. With lemons.
Here’s the initiating video: Julia from America’s Test Kitchen makes little desserts that look like souffles, but are actually a sort of lemon pastry cream, fluffed up with egg whites and whipped cream, so they need no baking. [12:42]
In case you now feel moved to grow your own, it can be done. This guy experiments with how to treat the seeds upon removal from the lemon, to best get a tree. [8:01]
Steve Cusato explains that Pasta al Limone is based on the real Alfredo sauce (not the American one with the cream — the butter-and-cheese one), and shows how to make it. [6:50]
Limoncello is an Italian lemon liqueur, but it is super easy to make your own from grain alcohol and lemon peel. Glen explains how. [2:53]
Now that you have all that limoncello, you obviously need to make a limoncello tiramisu. Lidia has a recipe for you. [6:23]
Preserved lemons are another delicious trick to be done with lemons. I’m sure the fully-preserved ones are superior — see recipe here — but if you want to mix up some quick “preserved” lemons, Mark Bittman at the New York Times has your back, and even has a dish at the ready to add them to. (Also: I add this link to the Serious Eats column on preserved lemons, because the writer credits ericlewis0’s find, the excellent Café Mogador in the East Village, for introducing her to them, and I’m sure that will entertain ericle.) [2:27]
Chef John offers a grilled shrimp that uses your newly-preserved lemons for an aioli. (Link to his own Thomas-Keller-sourced preserved-lemon video.) [2:41]
I could post lemon recipes all day, but let’s skip to a few tips for cleaning with lemons, from Martha Stewart. [1:59]
Moving on to the arts: Lemony Snicket is the pen name of the author of a terrific “children’s” book series called A Series of Unfortunate Events. I put “children’s” in quotes because they’re the sort of thing that’s accessible to children but also has a lot going on that adults can appreciate. This is the trailer for the Netflix series, starring Neil Patrick Harris as the extravagantly dastardly villain, Count Olaf. [2:33]
Onward to music! In 1965, Trini López (Trini is short for Trinidad) had a big hit with the song Lemon Tree, based on a Brazilian folksong. Here, he sings it on The Hollywood Palace in 1965, introduced by Kate Smith. [6:23]
I must have been busy in 1995, because until I went looking for the other Lemon Tree, I had never heard of the band Fools Garden, or their (only) hit, a completely different Lemon Tree, I liked it, so here it is. [3:14]
And finally, the Lemon Pipers play their 1967 hit, Green Tambourine. [2:28]
Got more songs, recipes, or whatever? We’re all ears!
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