Mary Barbour's Lemon Curd

Lemon trees in the garden are pretty common in Melbourne, and everyone is a winner when there is a glut of lemons and they are shared around. We've had some from friends, some from friend's work colleagues and some from the market so far this year. We even had a giant fresh lemon with a platter of sushi at Osaka in St Kilda - the top was cut off and inside was a tuna mayonnaise with some delicately cut cucumber slices.



With all these lemons I have been making lemon curd and preserved lemons. By popular request, here is the recipe I have for lemon curd. It was my mother in law's recipe - all the way from Campbeltown on the west coast of Scotland and is good enough to eat straight fro the jar.

Mary Barbour's Lemon Curd
Ingredients:
4 oz butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, well beaten
2 lemons, rind finely grated and juice squeezed

Method:
Melt the butter in a thick based saucepan over a low heat.
Add the sugar, lemon rind and lemon juice and stir till well mixed.
Whisk in eggs and stir slowly over a low heat until the mixture takes on the thickness of custard.
Don't boil (or it will split and have a grainy texture).
Pour in to sterilised preserving jars and put in to the fridge while still warm.

This makes a really fresh and lemony zingy curd that is great on toast. Mary also used to make these tartlets to fill with the curd. The rice flour gives the pastry a nice crunchy texture.

Tartlets
Ingredients:
4 oz margarine (you can use butter)
2 oz caster sugar
5 oz plain flour
1oz rice flour
1 egg yolk

Method:
Sift flours and sugar in to a bowl. Add margarine and egg yolk and combine using a knife or your fingers.
The pastry should come together with some light kneading, then roll out and line your pastry tins.
Bake in a moderate oven until pale gold.

When I was up in Brisbane recently I had an amazing lemon curd and goats cheese tart for pudding at Custom House Restaurant. It was served with a blueberry and truffled honey ice cream. The blueberries were lost in amongst the strong earthy flavour of the truffle, which was pretty rich and saved only by the sweet kick of the honey coming in behind.



I've heard it said that goats cheese tastes like the smelly barn in which the goats live - this isn't for you if you aren't a fan of goats cheese - if you are this combination of barnyard and citrus works! Here's my cheat version with shop bought pastry cases. I know the filling works now - so next time I'll make my own pastry from the recipe above. I used two dessertspoons of lemon curd to about 1 dessertspoon of a creamy light goats cheese. Just mixed them together and spooned it in. The lemon stood out with that ratio of ingredients - next time i might be inclined to have the same amount of goats cheese as curd. Question now is - do i need my own ice cream maker...?