Technique: How to Brulee, without Broiler or Blowtorch

Are you like me?

  • With a temperamental broiler in your kitchen/oven? The net effect of which is no broiling?
  • Without a blow torch for reasons of border control and air travel rules & regulations?
  • Yet with a deep desire to crack a sugar glass crust? Specifically creme brûlée, restaurant-style…….in your own kitchen.

Never has burnt cream been so appealing. To me! Say it with me (French accent et al). Creme Brûlée. crem broo lay.

DSC_0925

A cracked crust is the best kind for a creme brûlée

That luscious dessert of just-set custard, with a wonderful chapeau (topping) of crackable caramel.

Read more…

Travel by Plate: Tales of Moroccan Mint Tea

Our ‘dining room voyages’ begin with mint tea – thanks to Morocco and its famous tea culture. We drink our Nigerian version, out of a rather English teapot from Turkish tulip glasses, evidence of our global identity.  We love it.

DSC_0017

Mint is somewhat vital to our family’s happiness. For months, our garden blooms with its bright green leaves. Then we drink and eat the leaves and when our growing season is past, the D-Line street market, known as Port Harcourt’s ‘Fruit Garden’ serves us well.

It wasn’t always so – I grew up on good ole English tea. Read more…

Banga Soup: Love in a Claypot

Tales by Oritsegbemi Emmanuel Jakpa 

With the spliced rhythm of tribal Africa, 
with the pulse, and raw hide cloak of riddles,
with the drizzling monsoon on lemon grass,
with the serene river songs of the canaries,
with the dim light of the oil lamps, I reflect
on the times when under the tropical moon
fierce with shine like the sun, elders poured
into the open palms of my mind, the stories
of tortoise, and of birds; stories that are wise,
never fading off the memory, older than wine,
taste like starch and banga soup that’s eaten
in a clay pot, under a mango tree with fruits.

—–00000—–

We’d been married only a few weeks when I decided to make ‘Banga soup’ for the first time. For my husband.  As far as I was concerned, this was a rite of passage, an adult kind of bar mitzvah that would earn me a title, confirm my place as his true wife.

DSC_0502

I had grown up feasting on Banga. With fresh fish, with chicken and beef, on rice, with starches…and just plain licking the soup, but make it? I’d never done. Read more…

Edinburgh, by Instagram

I’ve been away in Edinburgh, where love has taken me by surprise.

For love has a way of doing that, doesn’t it? Be it love for a man, your child and even a city.

All my life, I’ve dreamt of loving only a handful of cities –Tokyo in the spring when the cherry blossoms perfume the air and carpet the ground in white and pink and Paris all year round, from rue to cafe. Surely my destiny is French.

Tea-Poached rhubarb with clementines, apples and 5-spice

Tea-Poached rhubarb with clementines, apples and 5-spice

So I wasn’t prepared to fall head over hills in love with Edinburgh. Read more…

The Last Word on Meyers: 35 things to do with the Famed Fruit

Consider this the sequel to the LA Times’s Lemon List ’100 things to do with a Meyer Lemon’, essential reading for Meyer Lemon buffs. Like me.

Indeed one can find a multitude of ways to worship the Meyer.

DSC_0460

#17: Give a Lemon Lesson. Watch children chomp on it with excitement

Below are 34 35 of my absolute favourite ways.

  1. Live with Meyer Lemons, in your fridge. Deep freezer. Pantry. Admire them, embrace them, share them too. Make your husband use them as aftershave (thanks Lara :-) ) Read more…

Lemon & Lemon Bars

Do you sense it as well? This grasping at straws. The Meyers are leaving me be. And I sit here, moaning the end of a season, a friendship….a love affair even, …..with Meyers, my Meyers.

The strawberries are no better. They’ve turned an insipid colour that I won’t dignify by calling red. For these bear no resemblance to the  vivid red fruit  I am used to.

DSC_1420

My Meyers are deserting me but somehow I know its not forever. Read more…

Meyer Lemon Brown Butter

There’s only one thing better than home-made butter and that one thing would be beurre noisette. Otherwise known as brown butter.

When it becomes beurre noisette et citron, brown butter with lemon, then you know you’re on to a good thing.

I say that with supreme confidence for this bright, citrusy liquid is perfect for many things.

Like to fry pancakes in.

DSC_1202

Dinner of Lemony pancakes with a kumquat-strawberry salad, with mint

And to create some buttery, lemony popcorn. Read more…

Guest Post on Meyers: Living with Lemons

I’d like to welcome my dear friend Deepa of Paticheri who is a dedicated follower of Meyers, like some people I know! Deepa has done so much to bring my love of Meyers to life, showing me how to grow Meyers from seed and providing the sprouted seeds for my planting. In addition, I absolutely adore her illustrations.

I first met Deepa ‘virtually’ in 2011, when she commented on my ‘Spiced Pumpkin Churros‘ post.  It turns out she spent many years of her childhood in my very same home country of Nigeria. I was totally bowled over, because not only did she grow up in Nigeria, but also because she wanted to write about one of my favourite ever snacks, puff-puff.

Deepa writes: ‘I chanced on your beautiful site while searching around for any commentaries on puff puffs that might be out there, for a blog I write. I grew up in Kano, and on puff puffs (unbeknownst to my parents, who forbade “outside food” as a matter of course). Just wanted to say here that your post was beautiful, the writing just perfectly sugared and crisp and warm, much like the churros themselves. I’m a repat, too, though not to Kano, but to India. It’s lovely to see narratives like yours out there, in parallel to the ones I’m living and trying to write about. Anyway, I look forward to staying in touch.

After reading Deepa’s puff-puff post, I was struck by how incisive, instructive, engaging, humourous and emotive her writing is. It took one post for me to feel like I had found a sister. And the die for this friendship, this sisterhood was cast. 

And then she showed herself true in loving Meyers as much as I do.

Deepa’s blog, Paticheri is a wonderful showcase of her many parts - cultural anthropologist, college professor, mother, wife, writer and totally wonderful illustrator/graphic designer!  

Her hope for ‘Pâticheri…… that it becomes a site for such narration, a celebration of food in all its messy, difficult, gastronomical ethno.graphic richness‘ is lived out every time she writes a post. 

Thank you Deepa, for agreeing to share not only Indian culture with us, but a view of the Meyer as a cure-all, not only mentally with its heady scents, but also flavourfully!

—–00000—–

When Ozoz asked me to come up with a guest post on Meyer lemons, I thought to myself: sure, that’s easy. There’s nothing easier than writing passionately about the things one loves the most in life, and Meyers fall easily into that category. Right?

Think again.

paticheri_meyerlemonrice_2013 (1)

Trouble is, I’m hardly alone in my expression of unabashed devotion to Meyers. To have swooned at their sweet fragrance and delighted in their generous juiciness. To have marvelled at the way they’d all turn from green to luminous yellow after the first Houston frost–like globular lights turning on, signalling southern Christmastime. Read more…

Chunky Meyer Lemon Caramel Sauce

We all are replicas of other people, living in some other place. With similar thoughts. And wonders….and even actions.

Take Janet and I – twins in our desire for Meyer Lemon Caramel.

One afternoon, I sat at my office desk. I’m not sure what prompted me, but thoughts of golden, citrus-flavoured caramel were swirling around in my head.

I headed to the world wide web to have a look – I was sure great saints of the Meyer had gone before me. And sure, they had.

What made me laugh though was that they too had peered out, and with telescopic eyes dug deep to unearth a lemon caramel recipe a la Martha, which was successfully converted to one for Meyers.

Giving me hope.

Giving me courage.

DSC_1264

Perfect Chunky Meyer Lemon Caramel

Read more…

How to Grow Meyer Lemons from Seed

I think of how I first came to Meyer Lemons and it was the memory of a recipe I read. A recipe with 6 ingredients (including a tart shell) and only 3 steps to make. It is called ‘Lazy Mary’s Lemon Tart’.

It took me 15 months to get my hands on Meyers but I did. Last June, I made Lazy Mary’s Tart, and we had it all before dinner. The only way I can describe how good it was, is that my very particular 2nd daughter, requested seconds. I guess that says it all.

I made 2 tarts in 2 days.

And that was the end of the Meyer lemons, I thought.

I had no idea one could extend the hope and per chance the life of a Meyer by keeping the seeds.

DSC_0770

The first sprouts –  Meyer Lemon shoots

Enter Deepa of Paticheri. And her wonderfully, enlightening post on growing Meyers – part poetry, part prose and full tutorial.

Read more…