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Location: Blogs Martins thoughts...
Posted by: admin	Friday, November 02, 2007
With the Marmalade festival coming up in February I decided to kick off a couple of citrus experiments and a few ideas have been floating around for some time. Two trips in particular form the source for this bit of fun. The first one was a recent trip to Sweden, where we stayed with one of Cecilia's Uncles in his house in Stockholm. He had a couple of fruit trees in the garden and when we arrived he asked me to harvest some of the fruit. He, like a lot of Swedes, owns a summer house, this particular one is on an island out in the beautiful Stockholm archipelago. As his family is growing he decided to build another one close by and had got several Polish workers over to do the job. He got one of the guys to bring over a crate of Polish Vodka so he could make use of the plums from the trees. This recipe involved Polish vodka, ripened plums and sugar. The resulting liqueur was beautifully balanced, a little dry with a hint of sweetness and not too alcoholic....honest.. The other influence comes from Italy and memories of sipping a really cold glass of Limoncello on one of our trips. So using a slightly modified method from my Swedish relative, I purchased some organic lemons and a two bottles of Vladivar, our famous Scotch vodka!...hmm. In truth for the best Limoncello you are supposed to use Amalfi lemons and pure 96% alcohol that is diluted only after extraction. 40% vodka is not supposed to extract all the oil flavors from the peel. But as this is an experiment I'm sure it will do a sufficiently good job for me to assess the results. Anyway half the fun will be in refining the recipe. So I peeled 7 lemons, and added a litre of Vodka to this little lot. It will pickle for a month and then I will make a syrup and combine the two. Apparently when the syrup is added that's when the fluid will go cloudy. Another few weeks pickling, then it will be frozen and served around Christmas. If it works I will be back for more. The eagle eyed will have noticed that I bought two bottles of Vodka, no I didn't drink one whilst peeling the lemons, but I thought I should use the same method on our beautiful Lyth Valley Damsons. Too late, they are all gone, what a shame, but not easily put off, I have used some plums instead. This time I have added 100g of sugar to the solution and will probably leave them for a month before the first "taste test". Now I had a load of peeled lemons, which if left will go rock hard. So I juiced the lemons I peeled, this went into the freezer and I will get more lemons and preserve them using salt. These normally turn out perfect and can be used in a variety of recipes. This particular batch will be ready for Christmas and the New Year. Whilst I was at it, I couldn't help wondering if you could infuse salt with "lemon essence". This could be quite interesting as I hope the salt will absorb the lemon oils if they are stored in a jar together for a month or so, it should be perfect on fish. I'll let you know if it works. Martin

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