While not strictly cooking (there is some boiling involved), I just had to share this recipe.
Last weekend my Awfully Dreaded pruned one of our lemon trees that was over-hanging the yard a bit too much. I couldn't believe by removing a few small branches we'd end up with four bags of lemons which translated to 9 litres of lemon juice.
It's not that long ago since I made virtually a year's supply of lemon curd, so I thought I'd try making lemon squash seeing as I seem to get through quite a lot of the stuff.
According to the label on the bottle of Bickford's Lemon Juice, it contains only 25% actual lemon juice (we've had other brands that contained up to 40%), but since I had so much juice, I thought I'd make a better drop of stuff.
My squash contains basically one of everything i.e. one litre of lemon juice, one litre of water and one kilo of sugar. I also added the zest of five lemons and 30 grams of citric acid (available in the baking aisle in your local supermarket).
I tipped this all into a ruddy big pan and stirred continuously until it boiled vigorously and then simmered it for about five minutes. When it had cooled somewhat, I poured it through a jelly bag (if you don't make jam and don't have a jelly bag, a simple muslin bag or old linen pillow case would do) to strain out the zest and other fibrous matter.
I poured the resultant squash into bottles and capped them tightly. Try this stuff and you'll never drink bought squash again; the flavour just rips out of it!
So to break the recipe down a bit for those who don't have bathtub-sized pans here's a basic recipe which can be easily multiplied depending on how much juice you have or how much you want to make:
100ml of lemon juice
100ml of water
100gm sugar
zest of one lemon
3 gm citric acid (or tartaric acid)
Dilute to taste.
Good health!
