Lemon Curd is a piece of Pith

I thought I would do something a little different today as I realised I had a few extra eggs in the fridge that needed using and a big stack of sugar in the cupboard that was ripe. Don't tell me I shouldn't keep my sugar in a stack, I know food. So I thought I would bust out some old family favourites that my family actually never made. I'm sure some family did, somewhere, however I am not aware of them or anything more about them, so please keep your questions about them to a minimum.

A favourite recipe and food of mine in recent years has been Lemon Curd. Living in Coburg is a lemon-lover's delight as there is pretty much a lemon tree in the yard of every house. This was a piece of brilliant urban planning by the Lemon Council of Australia, who in 1958 forced every second house to plant a lemon tree in the front yard and every other house to plant one in their back yard. As it turns out, this stroke of citrusy genius has meant that I will never be short of lemons ever again. Seriously, I sometimes come home and there is a shopping bag full of lemons on my porch with no note or indication as to which neighbour may have dropped them off. It's great.

Anyway, as I was saying, I made Lemon Curd. The word "curd" is weird isnt it? Don't let it put you off. Just so you know, this recipe contains only Lemon juice, lemon rind, egg yolks and sugar. The awesome kitchen tool of the day is this thing my sister got me on to, called a Microplane. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It gets only the yellow, tasty, zest off the lemon without taking the pith (the white bitter bit, not a person with a lisp trying to say piss). Microplane haven't paid me to promote this product, I just think its an excellent bit of kitchen gear.

So what is Lemon Curd? Lemon Curd is a delicious, sweet, zesty gloop, like Lemon Butter but simpler and in my opinion, better. I like to eat it on those little pikelet things that you buy ready-made from the supermarket and then throw in the toaster. The beauty of this is that it's pith easy and pretty much always turns a good result.

You need:
Zest of one lemon
100ml Lemon Juice
1 Cup of Castor sugar
4 egg yolks (keep the white as we will be making mini pavlovas tomorrow, which requires 4 egg whites)

First step is the separate the egg yolks from the egg whites. However you do this, keep the whites clean. If there is any yolk in the egg whites, the Pav recipe we will do later on will NOT work.

Mix the egg yolks with the sugar in a bowl until it resembles cake icing. Then put it in a small saucepan, throw in the zest and lemon juice and heat over a low/medium heat, stirring constantly until it just starts to bubble (should take about 5 minutes) TIP: DO NOT speed this step up by turning up the heat because it will cook the egg yolks and make the mixture taste like lemony scrambled egg, which is gross. And you will have to chuck it out, which is not the point of this exercise at all.

Once it has just bubbled, take it off the heat and let it cool. Pour it into a couple of clean (sterilised preferably) jars and put one in the fridge for you and one by the door to take to your Mum's place. Good on you.

TOMORROW! Mini Pavlovas to have with Lemon Curd.

Bert's Awesome Pizza, No Shit, Good Job

Let's sort one thing out right away. If you don't love pizza, fuck off right now and don't ever come back. 

Pizza is the ultimate food. It should be cheap and provide a sample of every section of the good food pyramid in one hit. Especially the goodness of life-giving cheese. Also, its useful for getting rid of the food bits in your fridge that probably wont get used.

There are basically two parts to making pizza, the dough and the toppings. Frozen or pre-made pizza bases suck farts. There should be a service at supermarkets where you can hire someone to follow you around and every time you pick up something shitty they slap it out of your hand and say "DON'T!". Pizza bases would be a slappable offence. 

Make the dough first because it needs to rise and it can do that while everything else is being prepared. The best way to make pizza at home is to make your own dough - don't let that put you off. It's seriously easy and fucking cheap. It takes no time to throw it together, you just need to leave it for a little bit of time to rise. So do this bit either the day before or in the afternoon and then when you get home its ready to use. And this recipe is the best I've ever found. Don't be afraid. It's very simple even if you've never made dough before.


The Dough
The dough recipe mentions a couple of things that you don't HAVE to use, like the Semolina flour, but if you do it just makes it a little better. Also, you don't need to use demerara sugar, you can switch it for whatever sugar you have in the cupboard. So like, teaspoon sachets from McDonald's are fine.

Assemble these ingredients. You can buy the cheapest, supermarket-brand flour for like 89c. It doesn't need to be too special. It's FLOUR. Just make sure you don't use Self-Raising Flour or the dough wont work. This recipe will make about 4 medium sized bases. If you want more, double the quantities on everything.

• 1/2 kg white bread flour (plus 100g finely ground semolina flour if you can)
• 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
• 7 g dried yeast sachet
• 1/2 tbs sugar (demerara if you have it)
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 300 ml lukewarm water

In a jug, mix the yeast, sugar and olive oil into the water and leave for a few minutes. TIP! Make sure the water is not HOT - that will kill the yeast and the dough wont rise. While that's doing its thing, sift the flour and salt into a big bowl. Then pour the yeast/water mix into the flour. Using a fork, mix the ingredients all together until it comes together in a ball.

Once it has some integrity start to knead it with your hands. Then take it out of the bowl and knead it on the bench, using flour to make sure it doesn't stick. Knead it until its smooth and springs back when you stretch it. Now you can leave it in a bowl in a warm room covered with a teatowel for about an hour until it is double its original size. You can leave it for longer if you're out or busy doing something else.

Lance Armstrong

Magic! But seriously if your ball swells like that in the space of an hour, see a doctor

You now have to knead it again to get the air out if it (this is called "Knocking back the flour") but after you knead it for a minute or two, its pretty much ready to go. I usually like to split it into four ball* (*HAHA BALLS) just so I know its all even and I wont have one giant pizza and one inadequate pizza. The worst thing on earth is an inadequate pizza.

I have four balls

The Toppings
What have you got in the fridge or the cupboard?  You can put a lot of things on it to suit your own tastes, which rocks. I generally stick to two or three toppings at most because imo, simple flavours are what pizza is all about. If you have pasta sauce, use it as the base for your toppings.

You can throw whatever you want on it but in case you need some wanky inspiration, try these:
Caramelised pumpkin with goats cheese and toasted pine-nuts
Potato and Rosemary with gruyere cheese (even better with a little truffle oil)
Margarita - put whole or half cherry tomatoes on top with just herbs and cheese
Char-grilled capsicum, pancetta and olives.
 

Caramelised pumpkin, goats cheese and pine-nuts on one end
Potato, Rosemary and parmesan on the other! AWESWANK!

Use whatever shape flat pan you have. I have a rectangle medium sized flat pan that works a treat. Round pizzas are for squares. Flatten out the dough to a roughly even thickness all over, smear some pasta sauce or tomato paste across it and then throw your chosen toppings across it as evenly as you can. I like to put a little cheese on top of the tomato paste first, then the toppings, then more cheese. It just helps to hold the ingredients to the base.


When its ready to be cooked, throw it into a pre-heated oven at 180C for about 10-12 minutes or until the toppings look visibly cooked and the cheese is melty and maybe even browning. You should be able to lift the base to check its ready, it should be light brown on the underside.

TIP! Don't go overboard on the toppings. Enjoy the simple flavours of two or three toppings and see how well they go together.

Ham and Mushroom for breakfast the next day.

TIP! If you don't use it all, just wrap each bit in cling film and freeze it.