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Dear friends,

You asked, I listened.  Behold, the recipes from last weekend's baking ExpoFest-O-Rama.  (Here is where I give my usual caveat:  the recipes are the authors', but the words are mine.)

Shaker Meyer Lemon Pie:  I have a lot of pie books, and as a result I have a lot of recipes for Shaker lemon pie, but I was pleased to find a Meyer lemon version in Sweet Stuff: Karen Barker's American Desserts.  I followed Chef Barker's filling recipe, but for the pie crust, I used my old standard, an all-butter crust from Ken Haedrich. 

You need to start the pie the day before you want to serve it, as the lemons need to sit in the sugar for a long time to take their bitter edge off.  Slice to paper-thinness 3 Meyer lemons.  Karen Barker recommends using a serrated knife to do this job; I would also recommend cutting the lemons in half.  Once they are sliced, they need to be cut into quarters anyway, and starting with them halved will greatly increase your chances of slicing them to uniform thinness.  Slice the lemons, half them again lengthwise so that you have wedge-shaped quarters, and place them into a medium-sized nonreactive mixing bowl.  Be sure to include any juice they have yielded.  Add 2 cups granulated sugar, mix thoroughly, cover and let macerate for 24 hours.  (I didn't let them sit the whole 24 hours when I made this pie; I let them sit for about 16, and the pie was fine.  I would not do this for less than 6 hours, though.)  Be sure to stir them two or three times over the macerating period to help the sugar dissolve.

The next day, preheat your oven to 350 degrees F (Gas Mark 4) and move a rack to the lowest level of the oven. Roll out your bottom crust and place it in the pie plate (see below for more detail).  Add a pinch of salt and 4 lightly-beaten large eggs to the lemon and sugar.  Pour this mixture into your pie shell, top the pie with the top crust, apply the egg wash, cut some steam vents into the pie, place it on a baking sheet and bake for at least 45 minutes.  (I gave mine an extra 7 minutes and it was perfect.)  Let it cool completely before you slice into it.

You can use your favorite crust recipe; for mine, I made a double crust from 2 cups (8 oz.) pastry flour, 1 1/2 cups (6 oz.) all-purpose flour, 2 tablespoons granulated sugar, 2 teaspoons salt, 1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, 2 egg yolks and 10-12 tablespoons ice water.  Make your pastry, let it rest, roll out the dough for the bottom crust and fit it into a 9" pie plate.  Fill the pie, roll out your top crust, seal and flute the edges, brush the crust with an egg wash made from 1 egg yolk plus a little water, beaten together; cut some steam vents into your pie, and bake.  It is not a bad idea to put the pie on a baking sheet to catch spills; if you include some parchment paper or a Silpat, cleaning up is a snap.

Meyer lemon curd:  As I mentioned on Sunday, I adapted Sherry Yard's Master Lemon Curd recipe from The Secrets of Baking for this curd.  When the time comes to beat the butter in, Chef Yard says you can either beat the curd in a food processor or whisk the butter in by hand.  Doing the latter produces a denser curd, while the former produces a lighter, slightly foamy curd.  I am a fan of the denser textures myself, but really, you can't go wrong either way.

For this curd, you need 2 teaspoons Meyer lemon zest (obtained by zesting or grating the peel on your lemons, taking care not to lift off any pith), 1/2 cup granulated sugar, 3/4 cup Meyer lemon juice, 3 large eggs, 4 large egg yolks and 4 tablespoons chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2" chunks.  (You can use up to 8 tablespoons for a richer curd.)  Run the zest and sugar together in a food processor for about one minute until the sugar smells intensely lemony.  You can also grind them together in a mortar and pestle, or rub the peel into the sugar with your fingertips.  In the top of a double boiler (or in a bowl that you can fit over a pan of simmering water), beat the eggs and egg yolks, add the sugar and beat until everything is combined.  Put the bowl over simmering water and stir with a whisk. Feel some of the eggs and sugar with your fingers; if you can still feel sugar granules, keep stirring.  Once the sugar is dissolved, add the lemon juice and cook to 160 degrees.  If you don't have a thermometer, just watch for the following signs:  The curd will become very foamy; then the foam will subside and the whole mix will start to thicken and tighten.  When the curd starts to approximate the texture of loose sour cream, that's when it's time to pull it from the stove.  Strain it into a clean bowl, or into the washed-and-dried bowl of your food processor, and beat in the butter, piece by piece.  Chill the bowl in an ice bath; when the curd is cool, decant it into a jar and refrigerate -- after you perform a quality-control test, of course.

Cornmeal-millet toasting cake:  It is my belief that a weekend breakfast, leisurely prepared, is a mood elevator, but a weekday breakfast, prepared from things you took time to make ahead on the weekend from Mollie Katzen's Sunlight Cafe, is an instant mood elevator.  My mornings have felt much sunnier since I made this cake, and I find myself with more energy for my lunchtime workouts to boot. 

Although the cake has lots of ingredients, it is not at all difficult to prepare:  Preheat your oven to 350 degrees (Gas Mark 4), position a rack in the middle of the oven and spray a Bundt pan (10-12 cup capacity) with nonstick spray.  Cream  4 oz. (1 stick) unsalted butter with 1/4 cup granulated sugar for several minutes.  Beat in, one at a time, 2 large eggs and 2 teaspoons vanilla extract.  In a separate bowl, combine 3 cups (12 oz.) all-purpose flour, 1 cup fine-ground cornmeal, 1 cup soy protein powder, 3/4 teaspoon salt, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1/4 teaspoon baking soda, 1 1/2 cups cooked millet and 1 packed cup light brown sugar.  (Blend the millet and brown sugar in with your fingers after you have combined the other ingredients.)  Add the dry ingredients to the butter, sugar and eggs in three parts, alternating with 2 cups plain yogurt. Be sure to stir well after each addition to incorporate everything, and don't overmix.  This is a stiff batter.  Spoon it into the pan and smooth it out with a rubber spatula.  Bake the cake for one hour, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.  Let the cake rest in the pan for at least 45 minutes before turning it out.  This cake can be eaten as is, but it's really lovely if you toast it, as Ms. Katzen recommends.  I have eaten this with butter, with damson jam, with cashew butter and with nothing at all.  It is all perfectly correct, and perfectly lovely.

Cock-a-leekie soup:  Yes, that's really what it's called.  Please stop laughing.  Since it's late in the day, I'll let you all make the call...shall I post this sooner, rather than later?  Or shall we save it for prime cock-a-leekie season, also known as January 25, also known as Robert Burns' birthday?

I thought I had a few thousand words in me this weekend, dear friends, but for tonight, the pictures will have to suffice.  Just between us mice, I was afraid that I had lost my baking touch, my white thumb, especially after a particularly hideous cherry pie I made two weeks ago with a couple of bags of the sour cherries I bought and froze over the summer.  The crust was overworked and underbaked, the cherries didn't have enough thickener added to them.  Lloyd and I each ate a piece, and the rest was consigned to the rubbish.  I didn't have much faith in the Shaker Meyer lemon pie I started last night, prompted by 'mouse's gentle urgings.  I had a bitch of a time slicing the lemons evenly; I only gave them a 16-hour maceration, as opposed to the 24-hour maceration the recipe specifies; I only gave the pie dough a four-hour rest, as opposed to the 24-hour rest that is my usual minimum; I managed to drop an egg on the floor, then managed to bump my elbow as I was picking up the filled-but-not-yet-top-crusted pie, sending lemons and sugar cascading over my worktable, threatening to run off the edge.  But I caught it all, refilled the pie, lidded, egg-washed, vented and baked it, and other than a bit more crust shrinkage than I like to see, I honestly believe that I could not have made a better pie had everything gone smoothly.  If you have never had Shaker lemon pie, with regular lemons or Meyers (but particulary Meyers!), it is an eye-opening and wonderful thing.  The texture is somewhere between creamy and jelly-like, rather like a pecan pie, only where a pecan pie is dark and sultry, the lemon pie is bright and sunny.  The recipe comes from this wonderful book, a Christmas present from my mother, and yes, Pam, I will certainly share the recipe.

I was so pleased with how the pie turned out that I decided to take a bash at Meyer lemon curd after all.  (To 'mouse and nakedjen, I am more than happy to send a jar your way, but this particular jar has been, er, extensively quality-tested.)  Because a Meyer lemon is sweeter and more flowery and subtle than a conventional lemon, I figured I could cut back on the sugar.  I followed the recipe that was such a big hit at my class at the Colony, Sherry Yard's lemon curd, cutting the sugar back from 2/3 cup to 1/2 cup, and was rewarded with a curd so grand that I am now hooked for life on yet another fruit I can't get out of season.  It's worth it, though.

It wasn't all Fun with Meyer Lemons around here, though; nope, I did some practical, utilitarian baking, specifically a collection of muffins and toaster cakes from Mollie Katzen's Sunlight Cafe.  Below is the Cornmeal-Millet Toasting Cake, baked in my fancy-pants bundt pan, all set to be cut open, sectioned into 12, and turned into toast, wonderful toast:

And this really deserves a post all its own, a roomy and thoughtful post, but until I get it together to write it, trust me when I tell you that the bowl of soup below is absolutely, positively the best soup I know how to make.  It is a beautiful ancient recipe, made from a whole capon, a pound of beef shin, leeks, prunes, salt and nothing else.  I can't think of anything else I'd rather make -- or eat -- on a cold day.

Lame and probably unnecessary spoiler alert:  Contains plot points from The Core and Deep Blue Sea, which, if you haven't seen them by now, you probably don't want to, anyway, which is fine, because, really, they aren't that good.

The scene thus far:  Lloyd sits in uncomfy chair in living room, watching HBO's 11:30 a.m. showing of The Core, a bad-science end-of-world piece of cheese referred to at ChezLloyd'n'Rina's as Neil LaBute's The Core, due to the presence of the beauteous Aaron Eckhart.  Bakerina, in the midst of baking muffins and toaster cakes for three weeks' worth of weekday breakfasts, takes a little break and joins him on other uncomfy chair in living room.  On screen, Hilary Swank pilots space shuttle.

Bakerina:  Okay, so nothing *too* bad is going to happen to the shuttle, because Hilary Swank is on it.

Lloyd:  Right.  She has to last at least close to the end of the movie.  She's not at that point yet where she can die close to the beginning.

Bakerina:  Like Samuel L. Jackson.

Lloyd:  Right.  [pauses for a moment]  Man, Laurence Fishburne would have pulled that shark's guts right out. [makes gesture of pulling innards out of great white, with accompanying raaaaaaaaa noise]

Dear friends, it is Meyer lemon season, and I am in a quandary.  Three pounds of these beauties sit in my fridge tonight, waiting for me to do something with them.  I have one sitting on a plate on top of the pile of books next to my writing space, smooth, golden and warm.  I pick it up, cradle it in my hand, pierce a bit of the zest with my thumbnail and inhale.  There it is, that lemony hit that makes me merrier than Christmas, but there is something else, too, something that only today I learned was thymol, a flavor note found in tangerines.   The skin of the fruit is thinner than that of our familiar large-crop lemons, and softer, so soft that I find myself picking it up, rolling it from hand to hand, stroking it with my thumb, feeling the little muscles in my hand relax.  I had much the same reaction at the market when I found them; as I bagged them, I found myself holding them in hand, a split second longer than necessary, until I realized that the produce guys were looking at me strangely.

I love Meyer lemons, the way I love Seville oranges in January, rhubarb in May, tomatoes and nectarines in August, fresh chestnuts in November.  They are fleeting, these sweet little guys, and in the next day or so, I plan to capture that sweetness as well as I possibly can, in the kitchen and on the page.

But how?  The lovely and talented Snowball has suggested a lemon curd tart, while the lovely and talented Steve has suggested that Meyer lemons might substitute nicely for the limes in my cardamom tea cake.  There is the flourless lemon and almond cake from Michele Urvater and David Liederman that I love so well.  There is Meyer lemon granita, Meyer lemon sorbet and Meyer lemon ice cream, variations on a theme.  There is Shaker lemon pie, featuring lemon slices so thin as to be see-through.  (I am a fool for Shaker lemon pie, but whenever I feed this pie to a crowd, there are always at least two people who are weirded out by the idea of eating a whole slice of lemon, zest, pith and all, and they end up sucking the fruit off the membranes and leaving a little pile of lemon skins on their plate, so maybe I'll give Shaker lemon pie a miss.)  There is lemon curd, lightened or not.  I always shy away from Meyer lemon curd, thinking that the fruit is too sweet to make a really assertive curd.  Then I pop my nail into the zest again, breathe in the fragrance again, and I realize that I am a dope for ever doubting.

The outcome of all this foofaraw, and the continued story of Why Meyer Lemons are So Damn Neat, will follow in the next day or so.  In the meantime, i'll take suggestions, any and all.  The season will be with us for a while.

In any case, the very idea of an egg endangering health was implausible.  Eggs were the nutritionists' darling.  The egg is packed with good things.  It has the highest quality protein of all foods and is the source of eleven essential nutrients and fifteen important vitamins and minerals.  They include B vitamin folate, which has been found to reduce birth defects, carotenoids (lutein and xanthophyll) that may reduce the risk of cataracts and macular degeneration, and half the required daily dose of choline required to protect memory.  Of the 5 grams of fat in an egg, only 1.5 comprise saturated fat, the fat fingered as harmful to the heart, which makes eggs positively virtuous.  An egg, moreover, is as slimming as a bottle of vitamins:  it contains only seventy calories.  An egg does lack vitamin C, but that can be added with a glass of orange juice, a staple of the American diet...

In the early 1970s, out of the blue, the American Heart Association declared the egg a threat to the heart.  The egg contained 278 milligrams of cholesterol, and food scientists had just decreed that no one should consume more than 300 milligrams of cholesterol a day...When I learned this, I thought of course that the scientists, being scientists, had arrived at a safe level of dietary cholesterol through proof.  How wrong I was...[in 1968] a group of food scientists got together and hashed over the idea of setting a safe cholesterol standard.  Some thought the whole idea unnecessary, but others were adamant.  So the debate went back and forth, and finally a compromise was reached.  The average human intake of cholesterol is 580 milligrams (per liter of blood) a day, so let's just halve that.  Make it 300 milligrams...So, overnight, as it were, and on the basis of an arbitrary calculation, the egg was in trouble, deep trouble.

                                             -- Gina Mallet, Last Chance to Eat

Dear friends at NY1:

It's not that I mind that you devoted editorial air time to what turned out to be, basically, an advertisement for the Pump Energy Food restaurant chain.  I've never eaten at the Pump, but based on what I saw on your report, they do at least make an effort to use whole foods, and prepare them carefully.  I think they may be a bit stricter than they need to be on the whole salting-the-food issue, but considering how much some restaurants oversalt their food, I will allow that this might be a good thing -- and if it isn't, hell, I'll bring my own salt.  Likewise, I'm not going to eat nonfat mozzarella any time soon, but I'll grant them that it wouldn't kill me to watch my butter intake.  And certainly, if I bought more lunches from the Pump and fewer from the Daisy May cart on 47th Street, I would be healthier for it, and maybe I would lose my ass just a little faster.

I understand it all, even if I don't agree with it all, and I know that you have to get their message across in a short time slot, as concisely and efficiently as possible.  I just wish, though, that you could have resisted the temptation to insert this little nugget of information into your copy:

Everything on the menu is baked, not fried; no salt or sugar is added; and egg yolks and soda are strictly off limits.  (Emphasis mine. -- Jen)

It has been almost six years since the Hu-Willett study, conducted under the auspices of the Harvard School of Public Health and the National Institutes of Health, concluded that there was no link between the dietary cholesterol found in eggs and an increased risk of heart disease, and yet we are still so frightened of egg yolks, and the fat and cholesterol contained in them, that we are willing to jettison the healthiest part of the egg.  Those nifty vitamins and minerals, those carotenoids that may protect us against cataracts and macular degeneration, that choline that may protect our memory, all of these are found in the yolk.  The white, being pure protein, has none of these.  And yet, we have restaurants that brag about not serving egg yolks.  We have health reporters on local news stations mentioning these lovely little yolks in the same breath as soda, which, last I checked, did not contain any vitamins or minerals or anything to keep you alive but sugar -- excuse me, I mean high-fructose corn syrup.  I'm trying to find words for how baffling and sad I find this, but all I can come up with is, well, nothing.

A postscript, to the guys with whom I stand in line at the deli for our breakfast sandwiches:  If you are trying to watch your fat intake, then what is the point of ordering an egg white and sausage sandwich, or an egg white and cheese sandwich?  (Or even the triple-dog-dare version, the egg white + cheese + sausage sandwich?)  Do you really think that you are doing yourself any favors by skipping the yolks and then filling the vacuum with cheese?   Do you really like the taste of egg whites?  What do you get from these sandwiches?  I'm not being food-snobby, or a crank.  I am genuinely confused.  I genuinely want to know.