meyer lemon magic with chezpim

Hollywood celebrities do not make me giddy. Incredible chefs and amazing humanitarians, on the other hand, do.

So you can imagine my level of excitement when entering the Love Apple Farm test kitchen to take a Meyer Lemon Workshop with Pim Techamuanvivat, the wunderkind behind one of my favorite food blogs, Chez Pim.

I’ve been following Pim’s blog on and off for about 8 years and still have a printout of her terrific SF restaurant guide floating around here somewhere. Those of you who attended our 2009 Sangria Party may remember me pulling hot chocolate chip cookies with sea salt (!) from the oven around 10pm – that was my attempt to replicate Pim’s dough refrigeration experiments with a NY Times ultimate chocolate chip cookie recipe. They were delicious and speak to her skills as a baker, not mine (in general Paul bakes, not me).

The class was a complete Meyer Lemon fest and I was thoroughly enchanted with the possibilities for our home-grown lemons. Pim started with a French-style marmalade using Meyer lemons and the coolest EVER copper jam-making pan (it’s from Lyon and I can’t tell you how badly I want to track one down for our olallieberry jam making next year). We were given a jar to take home (photo below) and I’m excited to share it at one of our Saturday coffee/croissant mornings (which will be making a comeback this fall, fyi).

She then moved on to a ‘Super Meyer Lemon Yogurt Cake’ that was unbelievably moist and delicious. Greek yogurt was a key ingredient as was, surprisingly, a few tablespoons of tequila. Pim shared a really great technique for getting the most out of any type of citrus zest: first, use a vegetable peeler to take strips off the fruit; next, cut the strips into very tiny pieces using a large knife; then, use your fingers to rub the sugar and zest together – this helps release more oil found in the skin and greatly enhances your end result (don’t worry if the sugar is a bit lumpy). Using cake flour instead of all-purpose flour was another great pointer I picked up. According to Pim, it gives you a finer crumb and this was very evident in the delicate lemon yogurt cake. It was served with a homemade lemon curd that blows anything you’ll ever buy commercially out of the water, hands down.

For me, it was revelatory to watch Pim’s technique in whisking the zest-sugar-egg-egg yolks to stiff ribbons. I now have the confidence to try it myself so watch out local friends – culinary gifts will abound this holiday season!

Pim then demonstrated her version of preserved lemons. The way I make mine is actually very similar (just lemons and salt) but I learned something especially valuable in the class: they are ready to use in as little as two weeks! (Claudia Roden’s version suggests about 3 months, which I’d been following for the past year). When I told Tate over dinner that our month-plus lemons were ready to eat, he immediately asked for the jar and helped himself to half a lemon! (really great on steamed broccoli, by the way)

The last recipe of the class was an easy version of a classic Moroccan tagine, chicken with preserved Meyer lemon and green olives. This dish took less than an hour from start to finish and was excellent. I was thrilled to see how moist the chicken was; it’s always tricky for me when cooking it on top of the stove. The secret was a bit of water added after browning the chicken parts.

Overall, it was a fantastic four hours in the kitchen and I hope to sign Paul up for her forthcoming class, “Not Your Grandmother’s Christmas Cookies”. I plan to take their cheesemaking class soon (chevre! feta! mozzarella!) – just need to find an open class that fits our weekend schedule (I think they are currently running 4). If you are interested in any classes at Love Apple Farm, please visit their website – http://www.growbetterveggies.com/ – they have lots to choose from and everything is impeccably run (thanks, Fiona and Cynthia!)

I don’t feel at liberty to share any of Pim’s recipes on my blog but if you check hers, http://chezpim.typepad.com/ they might be there. Happy lemon eating!

P.S. Just learned via Pim’s Twitter feed that my lovely tablemate, Nathiya, posted AMAZING photos from the class – check out the copper jam-making pot I covet on her blog: http://www.pineappleseed.com/blog/ !!!