As often happens in late winter/early spring, friends showered me with their ‘untreated’ lemons, meaning these were the real McCoy: pure, unadulterated lemons.
So I get a ‘gift’ of 6 lemons here, 8 lemons there …. What to do with a fridge full of lemons?
Limoncello!
I peel the zest only off of 14 lemons, add one liter of alcohol, and leave it to distill for 5 weeks in a glass container in a dark place (the bottom of my ripostiglio, or pantry).
Problem: there are still 14 whole lemons, without their lovely yellow zesty skins, to deal with. Now what?
Lemon marmelade!
What was left of the lemons had to be sliced thin and put into water in a glass container overnight. Then I drained the water, put more water to cover them, and repeated the whole thing – draining them again after 24 hours. That got rid of the acidity.
Then I covered them with water, put about 3/4 of a kilo of sugar, and boiled away on a low flame for about 2 hours.
The result is what you see in the jars!
Got to admit, I’m kind of proud of myself for not wasting any part of the lemon!
After a month or so, out came the yellow alcohol liquid. I decided to make it cream of limoncello, which meant boiling a pan of 2 liters of milk, some vanilla and 3/4 kilo of sugar.
Once it had boiled for a few minutes, you let it cool and then add to the lemon-scented alcohol and into the bottles it goes!
Off to the freezer…
Suzanne Branciforte's Italian Grapevine 