French food focus-About living and cooking in rural France,recipes,lifestyle,comments

FRENCH FOOD FOCUS Latest Post Other Posts Recent Older Truffles Cassoulet Index of Recipes L inks House Sitters FiFi About me About 'My' France Comments to: yankinparisot@gmail.com Archives		Life in rural France - Food - Friends - Wine - Cheese - Comments Welcome to French Food Focus. The name describes the intent of this blog. I'll focus on food and because I live in rural France the stress will be upon French food. There are numerous posts concerning life in France and, certainly, opinions about anything that strikes my fancy. If you have some good recipes or if you want to rave about any great French restaurants this is the place to do it. I hope you enjoy my ramblings about rural France! Click Here to send me a comment
		This is our village. Our house is the white one at the top right.
	Too Sweet by Half Possibly my most favorite dessert is lemon pie. I just love it, the tarter and more lemony the better. I've been rating lemon pies around the world for years and trying lemon pie recipes in search of the best. I rate them on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the best possible. My best ever, a 9.5. was at a restaurant called McArthur Park in Palo Alto, California. We used to eat there frequently when I worked in Silicon Valley. Nice place, it was a big barn like building dating from WWI. The menu was modern & good. They did very good ribs and a great Cobb Salad. Amongst their desserts was an absolutely terrific lemon pie. Very very tart and very very delicious. It was the featured item pictured on the front of their Dessert Menu. After having moved away for some time I went back for a meal; the lemon tart was still pictured on the dessert menu, but was in fact no longer available. Very disappointing! The other day I came across a new (to me) recipe for lemon pie. It was from Lucy Vanel who does a beautiful blog with wonderful recipes. (http://kitchen-notebook.blogspot.com/2006/01/introduction.html.) She's based over in Lyon. I had to try it as it certainly was a new method that I hadn't seen before and usually Lucy's recipes are good. It was simple enough so here goes: Ingredients: 1 lot of homemade pastry 1 large lemon (wash it well to remove any wax) 11/2 cups sugar 21/2 table spoons butter 1 egg 11/2 cups water Pre Heat your oven to 275 degrees F. Cut the lemon into small pieces and remove the seeds Put the cut lemon into a deep bowl with 1/2 tablespoon of the sugar and all of the water; then puree using an immersion blender (or use a food processor) Place the mixture into a sieve over a glass or small bowl. Push the pulp so as to extract as much liquid as possible. Place the pulp, the rest of the sugar and the butter into a pan or bowl over boiling water. (a bain marie) Cook for 5 minutes or so stirring often. While this is going on roll out your pastry and arrange it in a pie tin. (about an 8 inch diameter or 2 smaller tins as you prefer) Don't forget to make a few small holes in the bottom. Remove the mixture from the heat and quickly stir in the egg. Pour the mixture into the pastry lined pie tin and place in the oven. Cook for 30 minutes or until the mixture sets. Remove from the oven and let cool before cutting. THE RESULT! About 6 out of 10 I'd say. Good, but too sweet and not lemony enough for my taste. I tried it again today after the pie had sat in the fridge overnight; better, but still not the best. I'm going to try playing with this recipe as I like the simplicity and ease of making it. Perhaps I might boil down the lemon juice after it goes through the sieve. That should concentrate the lemon flavor. Add that taking out an equal amount of water. Maybe? Meanwhile, if anybody has a contender for the 'Best Ever Lemon Pie' recipe please let me know.