Limoncello

I started another batch of limoncello yesterday, so I thought that I should write down the steps.

Limoncello is a wonderful lemon flavored liqueur that Andrew and I first tasted in Buenos Aires. At the end of a fine Italian meal at a restaurant named Guido’s, Guido himself came around with a bottle of this yellow drink in an unlabeled bottle, and poured each of us a shot glass full. It was sweet, but not too sweet, and very potent. We both liked it. I had read an article about making it some time before in the SacBee, so when we got home I looked up some different recipes and found one that I liked. I made a first batch, and when it was done it was a hit, convincing even Sarah that it was delicious. Having made it and drunk some, and since our lemons are in full production right now, I decided to start another batch and document the process.

I started with 30 lemons off our tree. Since they were fresh from the tree, there was no wax to consider, but lemons sold in grocery stores are coated with wax, and it needs to be scrubbed off in warm water if you are going to use commercially grown lemons. Also, there are no chemical fertilizers in my lemon tree. Not because I’m particularly scrupulous about chemical additives, but because I’m garden lazy and I practice tough love gardening. If the plant can’t make it on its own, then it doesn’t belong in my garden.

The rest of the tools and equipment that I needed were, a microplane zester (more about that shortly), a large bowl, and a 4 or 5 liter glass jar with a (more or less) air tight lid.

The base for limoncello is vodka. Cheap vodka. Supposedly, it’s even better if you can get Everclear because of the higher alcohol conternt, but that’s not legal in California, so I settled for vodka.* (See note at the bottom of this post).

Once you have washed the dirt off the lemons, it’s time to reduce them to lemon zest. Lemon zest (or any citrus zest) is the outer layer of the skin, with none of the white pith attached. You need to avoid including the white part as it will apparently turn the mix quite bitter. Using a regular zester (the first time) was a royal pain in the ass, and nearly gave me carpal tunnel by the time I finished 30 lemons. The regular zester is not particularly sharp and is certainly not designed for high volume zest production. It was very hard to keep from getting the white part included with the peel. A sharp knife is another option. A very dangerous option.

This time I used a micro plane grater/zester that I got at Williams Sonoma and it made the whole process very easy and relatively quick. There was absolutely no white pith, only nice fresh, lemon oily zest. I did the grating over a large mixing bowl so that I could catch all the shavings without any mess.

Once I had all the lemons denuded and zestless, I put all the shavings into my glass jar and poured in 1.75 liters of cheap vodka. The only reason for 1.75 was that is how much there is in one of the handle jugs that you get at Costco or Sam’s Club these days. One recipe calls for two 750 ml bottles of vodka or one vodka and one Everclear, which would be 1.5 liters, but I think the extra is just fine.

Phase One ends with putting the vodka in the jar with the zest and putting the jar in my office closet for the next month or so. About every 10 days I will stir the pot, just to keep the vodka and the peels in the most possible contact. I’m not convinced this is actually necessary, but it makes it feel like you’re doing something.

After about a month, Phase Two commences. At this point you make a simple syrup of four cups water and three cups sugar (more or less sugar to taste depending on the sweetness you want in the final product). Heat the water then pour in the sugar to dissolve it. Let the mixture cool, then pour it in with the vodka for another month. Stir occasionally.

At the end of month two, you are ready to bottle the mixture. Supposedly the longer you leave the zest and the vodka together, the more lemon flavor you will get. I doubt that more than 2 months total will give you a much better result. The first batch I made was in the jar for about a month, and it tastes just fine.

Strain the mixture through several layers of cheesecloth to make sure that all the lemon peel is removed from the final product. Wring out the peel to get the maximum amount of amalgamated oil and vodka into your batch. Then bottle. Yield is about 2.5 liters.

You can collect bottles during the course of your daily drinking, or you can buy them. Cost Plus didn’t have a very good selection of swingtop closure bottles of less than a liter, so we ended up drinking small bottles of wine and recycling those to use as gifts (full of limoncello of course, I wouldn't give most people an empty wine bottle as a gift). There is a website, www.specialtybottles.com that seems to have a good selection of clear glass swingtop bottles at reasonable prices.

I also created my own label, and included directions on what to do with limoncello. It makes a very nice homemade gift at any time.

Store it in the fridge or the freezer and serve it ice cold. Add it to ice tea or lemonade. Pour it over vanilla ice cream. Serve it with lemon bread. The possible variations are limitless.

Next, I’m going to try it with oranges. My neighbor’s tree needs pruning.

*Production Note 1/6/09. Everclear is available in California, but it's 151 Proof, not 200 like true Everclear. My current basic recipe is as follows. This makes a very tasty and very potent liqueur:

• 1.75 liters Vodka
• .75 liters Everclear
• 6 cups water (there is enough alcohol in this mix that you can cut it with more water if you want a slightly less potent brew - I like it just the way it is)
• 4.5 cups sugar (more or less to taste)
• Zest from about 30 clean wax free lemons
• Yield is about 4 liters Limoncello

Abondanza!

George Stuart Nixon II 1916-2007

Dad wore a lot of hats, and he presented himself to different people in many different ways. He had been a warrior, a historian, a newspaper man, a club man, a self made man, a friend to a wide ranging, always fascinating group of characters, and even a few scoundrels. His obituary couldn’t cover half of what he accomplished in his life. But as I heard from many of his friends after the news of his death appeared, a common theme was how people had loved to listen to him tell his stories. I think the way that I will remember him best is as a story teller.

He started telling stories as a child. In elementary school he wrote and illustrated a complete history of an imagined country called Pozzia. In middle school he and a friend took turns writing and illustrating a comic strip chronicling the impossible and blood thirsty, but always well mannered, struggles of Hercule Poirot, (the good guy) and his arch enemy Aloysious O’Hare. Their hilarious and hair raising exploits kept my brothers and me in awe as we poured over them. There’s not much in today’s graphic novels that can beat this.

Dad was an energetic storyteller. There were always strange noises and theatrics and bursts of absurd songs in English or French or what he claimed was Russian. At Halloween he would put a lighted jack o lantern on the table and captivate us with the tale of the Brom Bones and the Headless Horseman. Sometimes the stories ended with a punch line. My kids almost fell out of their seats at the movies when they heard the punch line to one of his stories about “the lesser of two weevils” repeated by Russell Crowe in Master and Commander.

On Sunday mornings as a kid I remember all of us climbing onto their bed and listening to the story of Peter Rabbit and Mr. MacGregor’s garden. The moral of the story was twofold: 1. Take responsibility and follow the rules or be prepared to face the consequences. 2. If you were lucky enough to escape, count your blessings and learn from your mistakes. As we grew older we didn’t hear these stories for awhile -- until he became a grandfather. But then there was one difference. For his grandsons he did Peter Rabbit in French and added some French songs about the girls in Tahiti. My French isn’t good enough to tell if there was still a moral to that story.

There were lots stories of San Francisco in the twenties and thirties. He lived a lot of history, and he knew a lot of the people that made the history of his era. He told about speakeasies and waterfront strikes and his grandfather’s cook who boiled the funny papers to make coloring for ice cream.

He had studied California history. Whenever we traveled, which was often, he would show us points of interest and give us a little set piece that went with it. Black Bart used to hide behind that rock to stop the stage coaches. There was the ranch where his friends the Howards trained (and eventually buried) the famous racehorse Seabiscuit. The railroad workers called that cliff Cape Horn because it was so dangerous. They would lower Chinese laborers on ropes from it so they could blast rock to build the transcontinental railroad.

The most famous and enduring story of all was about how his grandfather had been held up and locked in his own bank vault by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The Wild Bunch later sent a group portrait as a sort of twisted thank you note.

By adolesence we knew where the stories would start and we could have told them ourselves, but we would roll our eyes and listen again. And new sets of ears would always come along and find the stories fresh and interesting. Now I do the same thing myself, and my kids groan when they hear them at this point. They too can tell the stories themselves. And I think that is part of the point.

Dad didn’t talk much about World War II to his kids, except for some of the more light hearted non-combat events. We heard a lot about Australia and the smokes and the Sheilas, but not very much about Guadalcanal.

Dad’s ability to tell an interesting story made him a natural newspaperman, and he accumulated a lot of stories about the seamier side of life that were fascinating to hear late at night on a camp out. As a PR man, and a travel writer, he was able to make his living telling stories, and he could always find the right story to keep a conversation moving along.

He knew fascinating people, some of whom we met, some who we only knew by stories. We heard stories about people escaping Russia after the revolution in incredible ways, French resistance fighters who had helped our own relatives, people who would grow up to rule countries, people who had tremendous influence in the arts, literature, sports, politics.

He loved to hold court at the dinner table, and was always at his best when he was surrounded with friends, drinking a little wine and carrying on a lively conversation. For our teenage friends to be considered worthy friends, they had to be able to hold their own in the conversation. He treated them as regular people, drawing them out, never talking down, listening to what they had to say, and treating their remarks with respect, and getting some unexpected results. There were not many homes then where the dinner table conversations were as lively as they could be when Dad was holding forth. There are even less today.

He used to tell a lot of stories about how he met and courted my mother, but my favorite went like this. “In 1946 she met the dashing Marine Corps Captain, Stuart Nixon, at a San Francisco Opera Company performance of Boris Gudonov. ‘I was dazzled’ he said. ‘She was a beautiful woman, she looked like a goddess to me. Four months later we were married.’”

At the end there were not very many stories, but there were still some. In one of my last visits to him he was watching the PBS series on World War II, chronicling the battle of Pelilu where he had fought. It was an effort for him, but he couldn’t help adding his own color commentary based on his own experience.

There is a lot I will miss about my Dad, but mostly I will miss his stories. They were by turns purposeful, instructive, mind expanding, entertaining, romantic and funny. Just like him.

The Holiday Scene

(Note: This post was orginally written in October 2007. It was only recently found in the bottom of my trunk and has been dusted off to help Thistlewood Post get under way.)

It’s the beginning of October and the Holiday Gal is at it again. Every flat surface in the house is covered with Halloween decorations looking for a place to stay for the season. We can’t currently use the dining room table, and last night for dinner we had to clear spaces at the counter so we could have a place to sit and eat.

One of Sarah’s more endearing and enduring traits is her love of holiday decorating and everything associated with holidays. She has been doing this ever since I’ve known her, and I don’t expect it will ever stop. Her family didn’t celebrate holidays in any big way, and I think this must be a reaction to her childhood. When we lived in Ohio, Sarah took over the walk-in closet in the upstairs hallway, and we christened it the Holiday Closet. Neighbors used to come by and check it out as a neighborhood novelty. Now we have a shed, another closet and the old armoire from Truckee with Aunt Mickey’s House Rules still tacked to the door, reminding everyone to write down their phone usage and not to use Tide because it’s bad for the septic tank.

Halloween signals the beginning of the Holiday Decorating Season, which will last now through Easter. Each holiday has a vast, vaster or half-vast collection of decorations that goes with it. Halloween is second only to Christmas in volume of available decorations. Next comes Thanksgiving, with some of the decorations carried over from Halloween (the recent phenomenon of referring to both Halloween and Thanksgiving as “Harvest” means that many of the base decorations can be shared, similar to the way that Toyota shares the chassis of a Camry with the Highlander). Pilgrims will replace Ghosts, and the Jack’o’Lantern faces on light covers will be turned around to the plain pumpkin side.

This year we are having a major Halloween tree. In past years we have had a small Halloween tree, but this year we have pulled out the regular Christmas tree (the small one, not the large one) and Sarah has decorated it with Halloween ornaments, orange garland, and Halloween lights. It will sit in the cart that we use to elevate the Christmas tree, and the cart will be filled with harvest-y themed objects including mini hay bales (bought at Michaels and hauled home in the bed of my pickup truck) and artificial pumpkins from China. This is in lieu of the Santas and toys that usually occupy the space at the base of the tree.

The Friday after Thanksgiving begins the Christmas decorating process, although for some years we used to wait until after Stephen’s December birthday to begin this in earnest. Even in our simplified lives, this is always the most elaborate decorating event that we do. I put up the outside lights, and we bring in the trees for the living room and the dining room from their summer quarters in the Cow Shed. Thanksgiving/Harvest decorations get put away, and the house is once again in a turmoil of decorations all over the place for a week or so.

Over the years the nature and sophistication of the trees has evolved from a sort of handcrafted country style, nothing shiny or glittery, to a more elegant style. One tree is decorated exclusively with representations of Santa Claus. The other tree is more traditional in the types of ornaments, and displays a number of ornaments that we have accumulated over the years, including some that the kids made in grade school before the Liberals Declared War On Christmas.

The mantelpiece always displays the Santa figures that Sarah has collected over the years. Some of them are probably valuable, some of them were just inexpensive geegaws that we picked up here and there, but taken as a whole, the sheer volume and variety makes the collection impressive. Each piece also comes with a back story on where it came from and how we came by it. There is a real bridge to the history of our family in this grouping.

When we got married, Sarah and I were definitely not the type to register for china, crystal and silver (although we have extensive collections of silver flatware inherited from legions of deceased relatives on both sides). Consequently, the only formal china we own is a set of Spode Christmas Tree that we begin to use on the Friday after Thanksgiving. During the Holiday Season I can be severely chastised if I forget to use the Spode instead of our usual paper plates.

There is also an extensive collection of Department 56 lighted houses. Although we don’t get all of them out these days, in years past we would build an elaborate Snow Village with the houses, sometimes running a model train through it, and scattering shredded milk jug shavings all over the place to simulate snow. Some years it was quite captivating, sort of our own Christmas window display à la Gumps or the City of Paris.

After Christmas most of the decorations will come down, with the exception of snowmen, and probably a few small trees. The house feels bare after Christmas. Some years we have had a Mardi Gras tree, but not lately. Minimal decoration will carry until us to Valentines, when the white feather tree will be decorated with glass hearts and red beads, and the mantelpiece will have an assortment of Valentine themed items.

After Valentines we may have a modest amount of decorating for St. Patrick’s Day, and even a little bit around President’s Day (not much, maybe a few stars and stripes, but Uncle Sam is already a theme around here anyway, so it doesn’t really stand out).

The final big decorating push will come for Easter. An Easter tree, Easter eggs, bunnies, lots of candy, flags of course. There are flags for all occasions. Once Easter is done, the house goes back to normal with the exception of birthdays and of course, the 4th of July.

Fourth of July stands out as the only major decorating event between Easter and Halloween. Plenty of Uncle Sam icons and American flags cover the mantle, bunting sometimes goes over the front door, and Mary Emmerling books come out and get scattered around the house. My brother John once famously remarked that it looked like Uncle Sam had barfed all over the mantelpiece. The kids thought that was hilarious and have never let a holiday go by since without paying homage to their uncle's remark.

I give Sarah a lot of grief sometimes for all this decorating, and the kids tend to be a bit cynical about it as well. But if there were ever to be a year when it didn't get done, I'm pretty sure there would be some major 'splaining to do.

The worst day fishing is always better than the best day working.

On the ocean, everything is trying to kill something else to eat it.

We are in Puerto Rico over the weekend for work last week and next, so we spent today following around birds who were hunting smaller fish, to eat them. The smaller fish were escaping from larger fish, who were trying to eat them. We were trying to catch the larger fish and eat them. And of course, the ocean, given half a chance, would kill us, and we would get eaten by something. We caught a barracuda and a yellowfin tuna. The barracuda, who ate our (fake) bait, got tossed back because they eat so much nasty crap that they accumulate poisons and are not usually safe for us to eat. We ate the tuna.

The day started early with a trip to Fajardo. Alberto picked Ed and me up and drove us out, despite a very apparent hangover. We got to the Marina a little before 8 am and met up with Ibrahim , aka Mustapha or Musta. Musta is a very talkative sales-y kind of guy whose father is from Palestine and whose mother is Puerto Rican. He speaks good English and extremely rapid Spanish and was also the guy who found the boat for us and arranged the trip. He was cleaning his own boat when we got there.

We met up with the boat, captained by Hochee, assisted by Cochee, who owns his own large charter boat, as well as being enrolled in Law School and who knows what else. We pulled out from the dock about 9 and headed out about seven miles off shore to where the shelf drops off abruptly and the water is about 1000 feet deep and sapphire blue.

Once we reached a likely spot the boat slowed and Cochee started to set up the rods with their bait, which looks like rubber squids. Once the lures are attached, the lines are dropped over and attached to the lines of the tuna tower with a large rubber band. When a fish takes the lure, the rubber band gives way, and the line is paid out, but until then, the attachment keeps the lines from crossing too much. Once the lines are set up, we begin to troll at about 5-10 miles per hour on the open sea.

Diesel fumes waft across the area, mixing with the smell from Cochee’s cigarette, bringing a powerful combination of aromas to bear in a very small environment that keeps moving around in unpredictable ways. The first beers of the morning come out. I have a Diet Pepsi. Ed is like a little kid, he is so excited. He has wanted to do this for quite a while, and finally it’s happening for him. We keep going around in a zigzag pattern, watching for birds, flying fish and other telltales. This part gets pretty boring pretty fast. You can only look at the scenery for so long, especially when it’s hard to stand up and move around.

After about two hours, a fish takes a lure, and a flurry of activity begins. Cochee brings the rod over to Ed, who had been sitting in the chair, and then he begins to reel in the rest of the rods that might cross over the active line. Ed begins a rhythmic pumping of the rod, pulling the rod up then reeling in as he drops the rod. This continues for a while until he has landed a barracuda, which Cochee quickly releases back into the ocean once I have taken a picture of Ed and the fish.

After the barracuda goes back home, we keep rolling around in the water with the sun beating down and the diesel fumes pumping out into the hot humid air. I eat a sandwich to settle my stomach, have a beer and we keep trolling.

Eventually I curl up on the bench and take a nap, probably for about an hour. All of a sudden the nap is interrupted when the reel starts making a ratcheting whine and the line begins to pay out quickly. We have another fish, and it’s my turn in the chair. The rod is heavy, and the rhythm of reeling in is difficult. The line goes out another 150 yards or more as the fish dives. I decide that if the fish is going to come over the transom it will be done by Ed, so I relinquish the rod and after about twenty minutes he brings it in. Chochee gaffs it and it’s in the boat. A yellowfin tuna, probably about twenty or twenty five pounds. Lots of pictures and more beer.

We go back to trolling for a while, and then around 2:00 Hochee packs it in and we head back to shore (I’m secretly glad about this decision). We stop along the way to butcher the fish and put the meat into plastic bags. This is prime sushi.

Musta says, why don’t we all go over to his place and cook the fish, so we do. His girlfriend doesn’t kill him for bringing a bunch of dirty fishermen home. The fish is delicious.