Since our neighbour Antonio was kind enough to give us a huge bag of lemons in return for some lemon curd, I got onto it today and have made 6 jars for him. It really is the best lemon curd and is so easy to make. Here’s the recipe in case you want to try it.
350g sugar
225g butter, cubed
juice and zest of 5 lemons
5 medium eggs
rounded dessert spoon of cornflour
Makes 6 small jars, that’s about half the size of a regular jam jar. Muddle up the eggs in a biggish pan, (about the size of pan you would need for cooking potatoes for 4 people). Put everything else into the pan and whisk continually on a medium heat for about 7 minutes till it thickens. When it thickens, turn the heat to low and simmer for one minute. Pour into clean jars. (Why do you always have to say “clean jars”? Nobody’s going to use dirty jars, are they?!) Put the lids on and store in the fridge. Just delicious on a bit of wheaten loaf fresh out of the oven.
Also, a quick pudding is…whip up some cream till stiff. Fold in a jar of lemon curd. Crumble up some digestive or biscoff biscuits in the bottom of the most beautiful, fancy glasses you can find. Spoon in the lemon curd and cream mixture – it ends up like a lovely soft mousse. Crumble some more biscuit on top and add a couple of raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, or all of them. Bet you can’t eat it without licking your lips!
While we’re on recipes, here’s another favourite. Paris buns. I’m not the greatest cook in the world but Paris buns are hard to beat, and hard to describe! Like a sweet kind of cross between scones and cake, but more cake than scones, with wee sugar nibs on the top. You see? Quite difficult to describe! Anyhow, here’s the way I do them…
290ml milk
140ml vegetable oil
170g sugar
1 large egg
440g self-raising flour
Pre-heat oven to 200C. Mix milk, oil, eggs, sugar by hand. Sift in flour and mix by hand. Should be quite stiff. (The mixture, not you, unless the old arthritis is once again playing havoc with your skeleton!) Drop big blobs of it onto a greased baking tray. Add some wee sugar nibs/pearls to the tops. Bake for about 15 minutes till risen and golden. Just too delicious for words and a wee taste of home. Err, as well as the lemon curd the neighbours (they’re all Spanish) are deadly keen on the Paris buns but can’t work out why they’re Irish but are called “Paris” buns. Actually nobody really knows, and who cares? They’re just delicious! (This makes about 6, but we ate the rest before I took the photo…)
Incidentally, can you see those things in the fancy bottle? They’re home-grown chillies. We thought we’d have a go at making chilli oil, so we shoved in as many as we could and filled the bottle to the neck with best local olive oil. We didn’t realise you’re only supposed to put in a couple of chillis. Suffice to say if you have a cold, a hangover or anything similar, that stuff will clear it up straight away. Either that or it will kill you.
My life in Spain 