Is what I wanted to call the post, because it has a better ring to it than “Jam Packed June”.
HOWEVER since I have posted this before July, I should make it clear that I am not a time traveller… yet. So all this did not happen in July!!!
As always, food is first. But this wasn’t an exercise in cooking or eating, it’s part of what I like to call “intense palate training” as for the coffee I drink, I cannot identify flavours within them. So, after having collected a variety of sour citrus, I ended up doing a lemon and lime taste test – to see what I could figure out.
Say hello to meyer lemon, lisbon lemon, tahitian lime, keffir lime, blood lime! I stopped buying normal lemons after tasting a meyer lemon, because I perceived the meyer lemons to be sweeter. And then I saw tasting notes for a coffee that said meyer lemon… so then I wondered if you really could taste the difference between different kinds of lemons.
And the insides! The lisbon lemon is your standard yellow, the meyer lemon is darker below. Ordinary lime above, keffir lime in all its wrinkly glory below, and then the obvious blood limes. That is how you identify their insides!
And lo and behold, the taste test! But there are only four?!?! Left is lisbon lemon, then meyer lemon with a slightly darker colour, then lime green lime, and lastly, blood lime. The blood lime really liked to donate its little pulpy things so they went in too. First of all, I didn’t have a fifth mini ramekin thing to put keffir lime juice in, and secondly, the person who sold me the lime said that it was bitter and best in curries. Could I taste a difference? Yes! Could I figure out which was which in a blind tasting? No! The meyer lemon was more.. “full bodied” than the lisbon lemon and I definitely like it better. This lime was not so sweet, and ended up tasting more sour than the lemons and didn’t actually have its distinctive lime flavour. Then came the blood lime, which was less sour than a normal lime too. And I did lick the keffir, it’s not actually that bitter but lends itself more to its aroma – and I wanted to make a curry after smelling it!
And that was the end of me burning my tongue off with natural acid.
Onto the tasty stuff! So I cured some ocean trout because the fillets were cheap, plus I’ve always toyed with the idea of making sake cured salmon, but I don’t have the sake. So instead, I call this “viogner ocean trout with chive scrambled eggs.” Oh, that’s right. I have to post the picture and make it a caption!
Wine cured ocean trout with chive scrambled eggs
Okay, so it would have sounded so silly to be so specific about the wine, considering I couldn’t actually taste it and I probably salted it a little too much, but it was perfect with the eggs!
And I’m not all about pretty dainty food. Matt Preston is totally right when he says you can make tasty stuff for cheap. I put some canned tomato soup with parmesan, pork and beef mince, plus kale, caulifower, carrot and capsicum and put the whole thing in a try in the oven. Smells great and will last me a week!
And I do have hobbies outside of cooking and drawing… which means too many hobbies. But here is my adorable little air plant and a bonsai fig that I bought and then placed in a terrarium jar.
PACKED FULL OF JAM