As I’ve mentioned before I read a lot of blogs, including every blog written by the lovely people who choose to leave me a comment and my one recurring thought when I read your musings or admire your work is, “I wonder who taught them to do that?”
I was chatting with my wee Nana last week on the phone and telling her what I’d been knitting and sewing lately. I was the typical eldest grandchild when I was younger, spending weekends staying at my Grandparents and getting that one to one attention that was unavailable at home with a plethora of siblings. When I was growing up my Nana made me the most amazing jumpers – she was always knitting until she had a stroke when I was about 9 or 10 and then she just wasn’t strong enough – and she taught me how to knit when I was barely a toddler. Before that, she used to let me cut up all the scraps of yarn and play about with them so I had an appreciation of textiles from a young age. It was my Nana who used to let me help her bake, who taught me the basics of cooking and food preparation, and who first let me play around with a needle & thread. Nana commented during our conversation that she finds it amusing that I sew, knit and bake but my Mother never did. Maybe it’s a generational thing?
Anyway. Two things that I associate with my Nana are knitting and jam-making, so it would appear that I’m more like her than I ever thought! Last Summer I used a massive crop of rhubarb to try and replicate the yummy jam from my childhood and it wasn’t bad for a first attempt. Not quite the same, but not bad. Last week I decided to expand my repertoire a little and made lemon curd. It was so easy, despite me making a huge error, that I thought I’d share it with you lovely lot.
The other jar in the photo is the fantastic marmalade that my lovely husband made recently following this Delia Smith recipe. It’s a nice recipe but I’ve found it very tart, next time I think I’d play about with different quantities and perhaps add a vanilla pod to the cooking process.
Those are 1L Le Parfait jars (available from Lakeland) so the recipe I’m giving you will make approx 2/3 of a litre, or 2-3lbs. It’s a bit of a mixture of different recipes I found combined with what I had available to me at the time.
Lemon curd
4 lemons, preferably unwaxed
5 eggs
100g/4oz butter, soft
450g/1lb sugar
Set a pan of water to boil on the cooker ensuring that you have a bowl which will fit on top of the pan to create a bain marie. Crack your eggs into the bowl and whisk them briefly to break the yolks and combine. Add the butter and sugar, then set aside.
Grate the zest from your lemons remembering to give them a good scrub first if they’re not unwaxed. Squeeze the juice from the lemons then add both zest and juice to the egg mixture, then set the bowl on top of your pan making sure you keep the water simmering.
Stir your mixture with a wooden spoon until the mixture thickens to coat the back of the spoon and is all combined. This will take no more than 10 minutes. Do not do what I did and doubt yourself, as I ended up stirring my lemon curd for two hours before giving up and decanting it into the hot sterilised jar where of course it thickened as soon as it cooled down.
It won’t thicken much whilst hot from my experience, but if you are concerned about the viscosity then you can add another egg. Additionally you should feel free to play about with the quantities of sugar. This recipe used a lot of sugar in comparison to others that I found and the resulting curd is very sweet which may not be to everyone’s taste. It is yummy though!
Posted under cooking, recipes, sewing
