When looking for a good lemon curd recipe I stumbled across both an Alton Brown recipe and a Shirley Corriher recipe...AND THEY WERE DIFFERENT! NooOOOoooo!
Recipes are different all the time, you say? How is this a crisis? Well, Alton Brown was my original foodie idol. I felt like he could do no wrong with his science and dependable explanations of How Food Works. He became quite the icon for me in my formative cooking years, especially having been the first to take the role of "chef I could really trust." Such a nice contrast to the Rachel Rays of the world! (yeugh.) But time passes and Alton's been kinda quiet the last few years.
And then Shirley Corriher came along, practicing the same logic and science approach that made me fall in love with Alton Brown. As a biochemist and Vanderbilt Alum, her book, Bakewise, treats everyday recipes with a methodical play-by-play problem solving approach. She knocked me off my feet. She's been my Deity of the Dish since I discovered her last fall.
But now, these two giants meet? The differences were subtle, but how can techniques differ between two people who are both renowned for always having science on their sides? O.O
How could I decide whose recipe to follow? Well, it was easy actually. I went with laziness. Corriher follows what she calls the "5, 4, no 3, 2, 1" method for lemon curd. 5 egg yolks, 4 lemons (plus zest), no 3, 2 cups of sugar, and 1 stick of butter. Dump it all in a sauce pan and double boil it. Bam. Put plastic wrap directly on the surface of the curd so no air touches it as it cools. Finished.
I left in the lemon zest because I thought it gave it a rustic touch. Perhaps someday I'll try to strain it off. The yolk-only nature of this recipe meant my lemon curd came out gooey, sticky, and beautifully yellow. Two cups of sugar and enough lemons also meant VERY flavorful. I'm sure there are people who will prefer using the whole egg and not quite as much sugar and lemon, but I've always preferred flavors that punch you in the face. It's definitely more dessert-y than breakfast-saucy (we make up words in this blog now, don't worry about it).
Alton Brown's recipe is mostly the same, just it calls for one less cup of sugar. It's his methodology, however, that varies a little. He wants you to start by just whisking the egg yolks and sugar in a cool bowl until smooth, then later you add the citrus (with enough cold water to get you to 1/3 cup if your lemons don't give you that much juice), and only after all that is finished do you put it over heat. The cooking time and done-ness test is about the same as Corriher's. Then another major twist is that you add the butter only after it's finished and has been taken off the heat. Again, it finishes with plastic wrap directly on the surface.
It makes sense to me to mix things in an ordinal fashion like Brown does, I like methods to madness...but like I said, I was just too lazy. Perhaps next time around I'll give it a try, even though I enjoyed corriher's recipe so much and I think it's a winner. I owe this to my first love, right?
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