Limoncello

One of my best friends has a friend who hosts an Iron Chef party each fall. The idea is simple: the hostess names a theme ingredient about a month in advance, and each guest brings a dish highlighting that theme ingredient. There are no restrictions on what kind of dish to bring, but each dish is “graded” by the other guests on presentation, taste and originality after a few rounds of food and beer.

Battle Bacon

Battle Bacon was the first time that I was invited to tag along to the party. I was so excited when I found out that I could attend, that I immediately looked up bacon recipes in Epicurious. I settled on what I thought were two completely original recipes: Bacon S’mores and Bacon Infused Irish Crème Liqueur.

For the Bacon S’Mores, I first made candied bacon, then I chopped that up and mixed it into marshmallow fluff. (My original thought was to make homemade marshmallows studded with candied bacon, but time ran too short for that plan.) I then took a few packages of precooked bacon and painted the strips with melted semisweet morsels to make chocolate covered bacon. To pull it all together, I spread the fluff on a graham cracker, topped it with some chocolate covered bacon and covered it with another graham cracker. It was very sweet, sticky and delicious!

The Bacon Infused Irish Crème Liqueur was more straightforward. First, I made bacon infused vodka. Then I substituted the bacon infused vodka for the alcohol (usually brandy or whiskey) in my homemade Irish crème liqueur recipe. The recipe only requires blending together half a dozen or so ingredients in a standard household blender. It was really good, with just the subtlest hint of bacon. Since I had leftover chocolate covered bacon, I artfully arranged that in a steel martini glass and brought it along. Same with the leftover bacon vodka: I put it in a pretty bottle and brought it along. After the votes were tallied, the simple chocolate covered bacon was the winner! And second place went to the Bacon Infused Irish Crème Liqueur.

Battle Apple

The popularity of my creations during Battle Bacon – and the persistence of my friend – earned me an invite to Battle Apple the following year. Rather than sort through the hundreds of options offered by Epicurious, I polled Mom and Dad for their ideas. Mom suggested going traditional with a classic apple pie made from local Courtland apples. Dad suggested something more adventurous: fried ravioli stuffed with apples and marscapone cheese. Both seemed like a lot of work for someone who is not a baker (that would be me!) Then I remembered Dad receiving an elegant jar of homemade liqueur at Christmas. At one point in the holiday festivities, my sister insisted on our doing sibling shots of it. Fortunately, it turned out to be a very smooth homemade Apple Pie Moonshine. Based on that memory, I did some Internet research on Apple Pie Moonshine recipes. There were a lot of them! As I was working on combining the best elements of each, Dad volunteered to ask his coworker for her recipe. It turned out to be very simple, and to fill a case of 8-ounce jars. So I brought that to the party, along with a plate of sliced green apples and a lovely toffee dip. Unfortunately, Apple Pie Moonshine wasn’t as original as I thought it would be. Someone else had the same idea, with a much better story about his recipe being a generations-old family recipe. The other Apple Pie Moonshine won Battle Apple. My friend was runner up with an amazingly delicious pork creation.

Battle Citrus?

In mid-July, the hostess and my friend were discussing possibilities for this year’s theme ingredient: eggs, cheese, carrots, citrus and maybe some others that I can’t remember. At that moment, I knew I wanted to be prepared with a good limoncello in case of Battle Citrus. Limoncello is one of my absolute favorite liqueurs to make: the recipe is straightforward; the prep work is easy; and most people love a good chilled limoncello. It is possible to make a limoncello in four days, but a good limoncello takes time; the longer the lemon zest infuses the alcohol, the better the limoncello will taste. Then there are basically three options as to how to finish the infused alcohol: with a milk-sugar syrup to make a limoncello cream liqueur; with a fresh lemon juice-sugar syrup to make a tart limoncello liqueur; or with a simple syrup to make a smooth limoncello liqueur. Dad’s most favorite is the limoncello cream and his least favorite is the tart limoncello. But, if Battle Citrus did happen, I could delay the syrup decision until the week of the party because all you really need to do after adding the syrup is chill the liqueur.

Marshaling the Ingredients

I had been told that A Dong, the Asian supermarket a few towns over, had some of the cheapest produce in the area. I was banking on their having lemons for less than supermarket prices. So, for the first time ever, I braved the interior of A Dong. Until then, I had only been in the parking lot – when I headed to the pho restaurant in the same plaza. The place was massive! It wasn’t a tight Mom and Pop Asian corner market; it was a super store with nice wide aisles designed to accommodate shopping carts. I found the lemons almost immediately, and they were so cheap that I bought ten instead of the nine I knew I needed for the recipe. With my mission accomplished, I set out to explore the store. I found fresh ginger root on the cheap so I bought what I thought was one pound of it (there were no scales in sight!) because I had remembered that Canning for a New Generation had several ginger recipes. I also found a cheap pound of peeled garlic, which I also recalled being used in at least one recipe in Canning for a New Generation. After I got done with the produce section, I moved onto the frozen foods aisle where I found all three items that Dad had requested. Then I went into the noodle aisle…and I had reached maximum sensory capacity! So I took my basket of goodies to the cashier and checked out for an amazing $20.01.

When I got home and checked the recipe, I discovered that one liter of vodka would require twelve lemons. So I planned a second adventure to A Dong to pick up five more lemons, two more pounds of peeled garlic for a future endeavor, and a few goodies for Dad. I lasted a little longer than just one aisle, but still hit sensory overload before I reached the end of the store.

Zesting the Lemons

The A Dong lemons weren’t in the best condition, so I scrubbed them very well with the rough side of a brand new scrubber sponge before removing the zest in vertical strips with a vegetable peeler. I perfected the technique while zesting oranges for orange liqueur earlier in the summer. But it still took about five minutes per lemon to completely remove the zest; multiply that by fifteen lemons, and it works out basically to forever. Again, my hands were raw and, on top of it, were cut up by the slipping peeler. But I had a mountain of peel by the end of it.

I measured one liter of vodka into a sealable plastic container and added the lemon peel. There was so much that it filled the liter of vodka! I was sorely tempted to get creative and add some ginger slices and/or dried rose petals to the vodka to infuse with the lemon zest. But I didn’t. I decided to keep the infusion pure just in case citrus was not selected as the theme and I wanted to give some of the limoncello to Dad. He’s a purist and wouldn’t appreciate innovative flavors in his limoncello. Besides, I could always infuse the syrup with the creative flavors and use that to enhance the limoncello. So I set the container of the vodka and lemon zest in my horde cabinet, a cool dark place, to steep while I was on vacation.

Finishing the Liqueur

After I got back from vacation, I found out that cheese had been selected as the theme of the Iron Chef Party, which meant that the limoncello would be going to Dad and a few lucky friends. Since Dad already had three jars of buddhacello – a limoncello style liqueur made from the Buddha Hand fruit – there really was no rush to finish the limoncello. So I let the lemon zest steep in the vodka in its cool dark place for about another two months. However, I almost immediately found another use for the lemon juice that I had squeezed out of the naked lemons.

When I finally got around to finishing the liqueur, I opted for a milk-sugar syrup to differentiate this limoncello from the buddhacello that I made earlier in the year. Making a milk-sugar syrup is very easy: combine the milk and white sugar a large saucepan, simmer it for half an hour, and then let cool. While the syrup was simmering, I poured the vodka and lemon zest through a fine mesh sieve and let that sit for about half an hour to fully drain.

Once the syrup was cooled, I whisked the flavored vodka into the syrup until it was fully combined. The final step in the process was to ladle the liqueur into half-pint jelly jars for distribution. I tried not to make a mess of that! Of course, the challenge was finding room in my refrigerator for all the jars until they are given away; I discovered that I had some space in a little used crisper drawer so that’s where I stashed the jars.

The Verdict

Once the mess was cleaned up, I poured some limoncello cream liqueur into a cordial glass and gave it a try. It was really good! Just the right balance of sweet and strong, with a definite lemon taste to it.

Limoncello Cream Liqueur Recipe

I adapted this recipe from a random magazine clipping, which says it is good for one month. That’s not true – the bottle in my refrigerator was still good after my years of adventures in Texas.

Of course, I never soak my lemon zest for just four days. That is just the minimum required to infuse the alcohol with some lemon flavor. I like to leave the zest in for at least one month, which turns the alcohol a nice bright yellow.

9 lemons
1 750ml bottle 100 proof vodka (or grain alcohol)
2 qt milk
1 ½ cup white sugar

1. Remove zest from lemons with a vegetable peeler or very sharp knife. It is easiest to remove the peel in vertical strips rather than horizontal circles. Reserve the fruit for another use.
2. Soak the lemon zest in the vodka at room temperature for at least 4 days.
3. Strain lemon zest out of the vodka. Discard the lemon zest. Reserve the flavored vodka.
4. Simmer together milk and sugar, uncovered, for about 30 minutes.
5. Cool milk mixture completely.
6. Combine milk mixture and flavored vodka. Milk will curdle initially, and needs to be whisked into the vodka.
7. Pour into final bottle (or jar). Chill until cold.
8. Keep refrigerated.

• If using one liter of vodka instead of 750 ml, add three lemons, ½ cup sugar and 2 cups (½ quart) milk.

Regular Limoncello Recipe

This is my adaptation of the limoncello cream recipe, which has a definite lemon sourness to it. If you’d like a smoother, sweeter liqueur, use straight water instead of a mixture of lemon juice and water.

9 lemons
1 750ml bottle 100 proof vodka (or grain alcohol)
2 cups white sugar

1. Remove zest from lemons with a vegetable peeler or very sharp knife. It is easiest to remove the peel in vertical strips rather than horizontal circles.
2. Juice the naked lemons and save the juice in the refrigerator.
3. Soak the lemon zest in the vodka at room temperature for at least 4 days.
4. Strain lemon zest out of the vodka. Discard the lemon zest. Reserve the flavored vodka.
5. Add water to the reserved lemon juice to make 2½ cups liquid.
6. Simmer the diluted lemon juice with the sugar until the liquid is completely clear.
7. Combine the lemon syrup and the flavored vodka.
8. Pour into final bottle (or jar). Chill until cold.
9. Keep refrigerated.