Home At Last! with Patty Gironda

      Ron and I spent a pleasant evening in the kitchen. Ron peeled and juiced the last of the lemons while I prepared a simple dinner of grilled tandori chicken, steamy brown rice with plump peas and carrots and sweet potatoes enhanced with pinch of ground coriander. With a half cup of the Tamarind sauce made the day before, I created a fragrant peach sauce with the addition of a simple emulsion of carrots, cilantro, shallots, garlic and celery. Chicken stock, cumin and tandori added sultry layers to the sauce as it bubbled in its shiny pot. The addition of the peaches soaked in dessert wine created the perfect balance of sweet, savory and spicy goodness!  

  Dessert! Lemon Cake with Lemon Creme and Hazelnuts. Enough Said!

        Thinking that we wouldn’t be seeing sunshine and warm weather for a few more days we were forced to create a little faux-sunshine here on the ark with a big box of juicy California lemons. It’s time to make one of the two batches of Limoncello that we will make this year so I solicited my husband-the expert lemon peeler-juicer person in our family. The fragrant oils wafted through the house lifting our spirits and turning our thoughts to Italy! We imagined ourselves living in Tuscany and handpicking lemons from our own trees, tending the olive trees and imagining the first yield of our own cold-pressed olive oil. In the short time we fantasized about our villa in Tuscany, Ron peeled and juiced 10 pounds of lemons. We covered the peels with a quart of vodka and retired them to a nice, cool dark spot where the oils and flavor will be leeched out of the rinds. With some of the fresh juice I created a batch of lemon simple syrup that will begin a transformatio...