We're blessed to have two bountiful lemon trees in our front yard. (They're particularly full of lemons this year.) For the past two years, I've wanted to make and bottle limoncello as a holiday gift for friends and family (inspired by Stefania). However, because most recipes require a very long steeping time -- and I can never seem to plan that far ahead -- I've been late to the game.
This year, I was fortunate enough to test out a batch made by my friend and fellow foodie in cooking crime, Dr. Geek. His limoncello was made over the course of a few weeks, versus the usual 40-plus days required. And it was really, really good and should have been labeled "This is not candy. Proceed with caution. You've been warned." Because it was made with 100-proof vodka. That's 50 percent alcohol, amigos. And so yum.
I know that the longer the vodka and lemons sit, the better the taste, but sometimes you just have to roll with it. And Dr. Geek's test run of quickie limoncello gave me reason to roll with it.
So this weekend, I began the three-part process of making limoncello. The first part required the purchase of the vodka and the plucking 15 lemons from our trees.
I then used a microplaner to remove the zest from those lemons. As Dr. Geek told me, it looks more like lemon dust than lemon zest. It smells so delicious and sweet that I started looking for recipes to make candied lemon peels.
I poured two 750-ml bottles of 100-proof vodka into the one gallon glass container filled with the lemon zest, covered it with plastic wrap, and it's now sitting in the dark corner of our kitchen. It will set for about 5 days, when I'll move on to step two.
p.s. Happy Birthday, Dr. Geek!
