Lemon Curd

I feel I have to confess that I did not make this lemon curd myself, although I did witness it being done. And I admit that that is a horribly posed photo with a raw crumpet. But I thought there would be no harm in documenting the process that my sister Cescy went through, guided by good old Nigel S for the Guardian. The recipe and article, which you should probably just read rather than this post, is here.

There was just one crucial change that we decided to make and that was to strain out the lemon zest. We just don’t like those bitty bits. Abominably fussy, I know. But the zest goes in initially, of course, because it is vital for the flavour.

This seems to be the bit when the sugar was added...

Yep, so that's it really. My only criticism of Nigel's recipe was that it only made one quite large jar of lemon curd and I think it's more fun to make a hefty batch. In our house we also like to keep it in the freezer - the combination of cold, melting lemon curd and hot toast is a real winner. It's a kind of ice cream on pancake scenario. 

Vegetable crisps

Sweet crisps basically. They're pretty sickly but ridiculously more-ish. I very almost bought a mandolin for this activity because I could imagine bothering to peel the veg into wafer thin slices. But at the last minute I discovered that my mum’s ancient magimix has a blade designed for chopping vegetables very finely. She has never used it in all the years she’s had her blender. Check out the retro packaging:

Anyway, my advice is, if you have a blender, to have a look at the attachments it came with because it probably has something ideal for this recipe. I had great fun slicing all the veg up at top speed and arranging it proudly on a platter...

And then I deep fried the whole lot in batches which did actually take quite a long time. I’m sure this would be a lot easier with a deep fat fryer. I know people say you can bake them but I just couldn’t imagine the crisps curling up and cooking evenly that way. Mine were pretty greasy though it has to be said.

We doused them in salt and tucked in over gin and tonics and it was good. Here's the recipe...

Ingredients

2 parsnips

2 sweet potatoes

4 beetroots

2 carrots
Vegetable or sunflower oil
Salt

1)      Slice all the veg up as thin as you can manage.

2)      Deep fry in very hot oil in batches until they curl and crisp up.

3)      Remove with a slotted spoon and put them on to some kitchen roll to reduce greasiness.

4)      Sprinkle with salt and serve.