Start now for homemade holiday gifts
Halloween hasn't even happened, but, like your local box store, I suggest you start thinking about Christmas. That's if you plan on making any holiday gifts, and if the ones you plan on making need to steep, cure or infuse.
A new book will get you started: “Gifts Cooks Love: Recipes for Giving” from the Sur La Table cooking stores and food writer Diane Morgan (Andrews McMeel, $25). The book includes many recipes preserves and chutneys, cookies and cakes that can be made at the last minute, but there are a number that involve planning well ahead.
The limoncello recipe, below, is one of them. It requires 40 to 80 days of steeping; so if you get started by Oct. 21, you can just make it for the first day of Hanukkah (Dec. 1); if you start on Nov. 14, you can bottle your brew on Christmas Eve. But if you want to give the liqueur a little more time to steep, and give yourself a little less last-minute work, you might want to start early.
Like now.
Limoncello is the refreshing, lemon-flavored, after-dinner drink that has, in recent years, gotten incredibly and deservedly popular. Some folks use 100-proof vodka to make it. I have tried it and found the results disappointing. The best recipes, like the one below, use 151- or 190-proof grain alcohol, such as Everclear. This is where even more planning comes in. A spokeswoman for Luxco, the company that makes Everclear, says the sale of grain alcohol is illegal in five states: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts and New York. If you live in one of them, you will have to factor in a trip to procure a couple of bottles. And don't worry: The final product is diluted to reduce the alcohol content.
As only the peel of the lemon is used in making limoncello, you will want to buy organic lemons, if at all possible. And you'll want to be ready to make lemonade with the rest of the fruit. When life hands you lemons, make holiday gifts.
Ÿ Marialisa Calta is the author of “Barbarians at the Plate: Taming and Feeding the American Family” (Perigee, 2005). For more information, go to www.marialisacalta.com.