The Man Who Ate Everything - Jeffrey Steingarten [198]
Dazey Lemon Ice
A good friend of mine who owns one of New York’s better restaurants was having trouble with his lemon sorbet. Either in tribute to my prowess at the ice-cream freezer or in desperation, he turned to me for help, and I offered to make five different lemon ices and let him choose. My favorite lemon ices are flavored with the zest—the yellow layer of peel but not the white part, or pith, which is quite bitter. I dreaded the prospect of zesting fifteen lemons with a traditional tool—a vegetable peeler, a zester, or an ordinary grater—because I typically wind up on the verge of exhaustion, my knuckles also zested. The Dazey Stripper was a godsend. The winning recipe:
1¼ cups water
1¼ cups sugar
6–7 lemons
1 orange, juiced
Combine the water and sugar in a 2-quart saucepan. Stir with a wooden spoon over high heat until the mixture comes to a full boil. Pour into a bowl and let cool. Dazey-strip the zest from 3 lemons, chop roughly, and infuse in the cool sugar syrup for 2 hours. Squeeze 1¾ cups of lemon juice (6–7 lemons) and mix into the sugar syrup with the juice of 1 orange. Strain into your ice-cream maker and freeze.
December 1988
Dozens of books concentrate on kitchen tricks, tips, trucs (French for “tricks”), and tours de main. So do the pages of helpful hints in food magazines. Fresh eggs will sink immediately in salted water, but bad eggs will float. (This seems to be true.) Chop onions without tears by wearing goggles, chilling the onion (partially successful), or lighting a candle on the cutting board to burn away the sulfurous gases (small or no benefit). Give gravy a warm, deep color (without ruining its flavor?) by adding instant-coffee powder. Set loaves of bread to rise in your dishwasher (leaving an inch of water in the bottom of the machine from the wash cycle and switching to the dry cycle for a minute or two). For instant whipped cream to garnish desserts, drop dollops (or pipe rosettes) of sweetened whipped cream on a cookie sheet, freeze, transfer to an airtight container, store in the freezer, and remove as you need them fifteen minutes before consuming (a wonderful truc that pops up in many sources). Skin hazelnuts by boiling them in water with a teaspoon of baking soda (not a chance). Make it easy to remove whole spices from a soup, stew, or sauce by first putting them in a mesh tea ball. Core and wash lettuces by rapping the bottom on the counter to loosen the core (which can now be pulled out in one piece), inverting, filling the hole with water to rinse out the dirt, and separating the leaves (works well with iceberg).
Keep egg yolks in the refrigerator up to three days by covering them with water (not bad). When you need a small amount of lemon juice, do not cut the fruit in half; just pierce it with a skewer, squeeze out some juice, and then refrigerate the fruit. (A terrific lemon saver. But once, when I squeezed the lemon with excessive force, the entire pointy end flew into my eye.) To cure excessive vomiting, try two teaspoons whiskey, one teaspoon water, and one teaspoon ground cinnamon. (Source: Charlotte, Michigan, 1909. But what should you do for moderate vomiting?) To remove fat from stock, drop ice cubes into the pot and the fat will cling to them. (You’ll need a lot of ice cubes. And remember to remove them before they melt.) When you water hanging plants, cover their bottom with shower caps. When your bread dough is rising, cover the bowl with a shower cap (not the same shower cap).
It’s a Fact
Q In the days before people had clocks, how did recipes specify cooking times?
A. An Anglo-Norman recipe from the 1200s instructed