Category: Uncategorized

Fresh Limeade

The frozen concentrated orange juice that we enjoy today was developed during World War II. The Florida Citrus Commission assembled a team of three researchers to improve the quality of processed orange products. The immediate goal was to produce a concentrated orange juice that would taste like fresh for the armed forces fighting in Europe and on islands in the Pacific Ocean. The long term goal was to sell more orange juice. The team succeeded at both.

C.D. Atkins, Edwin L. Moore and L. G. MacDowell discovered a way to produce a concentrated frozen orange juice that retained most of the flavor and much of the vitamin C of fresh juice. The work was done at a laboratory in Lakeland, Florida, provided by the United States Department of Agriculture, and the first major order for the new product was placed by the U.S. Army.

After a relatively slow start, retail sales of frozen concentrated orange juice from Florida Foods Corporation took off in 1949 when the company changed its name to Minute Maid in 1949 and hired Bing Crosby to croon its praises. The process developed by that team wanting to help the army provide “fresh” orange juice for the troops is used to make many other frozen juices we enjoy today.

Since my mother was an early adopter of new food products, we had juice made from stuff that looked like orange popsicles sometime in the early 1950’s, and I am pretty sure that we also had limeade made from stuff that looked like green popsicles before I left for college.

I’m not very particular about lemonade, but I still think that limeade made with fresh limes has a better flavor than even that made from premium quality concentrates. The secret seems to be the lime zest which produces a deep delicious lime flavor. You release that flavor by heating the zest in the sugar syrup. It takes a little time to grate the zest, but the results are worth it.

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 cup water 
1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups sugar
1 T lime zest
1 1/2 cups fresh lime juice 
6 cups cold water 
1 drop green food color

PROCEDURE:

Wash and dry at least eight limes. If they are small or not very juicy, you may need a dozen. Use a fine kitchen grater to remove the zest, the green outer layer of the rind, from several of them until you have a tablespoonful.

Bring 1/2 cup water to a boil in a medium saucepan. Stir in the sugar and the zest
until sugar is dissolved and the mixture comes to a full boil. Remove the pan from the heat. Squeeze enough limes to collect a cup and a half of juice while the syrup is cooling. Pour the juice into a large container.

Mix in a cup of cold water to further cool the syrup and stir it into the juice. Add five more cups of cold water and a drop of green food color, stir well and refrigerate.

NOTES: It is easier to extract the juice from the limes if you microwave them a few seconds before squeezing them. I heat three limes at a time for thirty-five seconds in our microwave.

When I first made this limeade I thought that the zest would make the limeade look like it had some impurity in it, but I don’t even notice it. I stir the zest into the syrup with a fork and watch for any big pieces of rind that may have found their way into the syrup and remove them with the fork.

If you want to have the limeade ready to drink right away, melt some ice cubes into the juice and syrup when you add the water and pour the limeade over ice cubes in the glasses when you serve it.

Leftover Chicken Spaghetti Sauce

“When a poor man eats a chicken, one of them is sick,” says Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. In our home when I was growing up, we could have said, “When Mom puts a chicken on the table, it disappears.”

However, when we roast a chicken (or buy a rotisserie chicken) today, we often have lots of chicken left on the platter. Now what do we do?

I think that cold chicken sandwiches are wonderful but not everyone likes them as much as I do. Here is a tasty alternative from Jane Marsh Dieckmann’s Use It All: The Leftovers Cook Book. Her recipe calls for just a half cup of leftover chicken, but I like meat on my spaghetti, and using a cupful will get rid of that bird in the fridge faster.

INGREDIENTS:

2 T olive oil
1 medium onion (2 to 3 inches)
1/2 cup water
1/2 to 1 cup leftover chicken
1/2 tsp. sage
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup dry white wine
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese

PROCEDURE:

Clean and chop the onion to a quarter-inch dice. Chop the chicken to a half inch dice. Grate about a half cup of Parmesan cheese.

Start the spaghetti water and cook the spaghetti according to directions on the package.

Heat the oil in a skillet. Add the onion and water and simmer three or four minutes until the onion is soft. Stir in the chicken, salt, sage and wine and simmer six or seven minutes until the liquid is reduced by about half.

Spoon the sauce over the spaghetti, sprinkle generously with Parmesan cheese and serve with green salad and good bread. Pass extra Parmesan at the table.

NOTES: Sauvignon blanc and chardonnay are both acceptable wines for this dish. If you want to make the dish taste even more Italian, pinot grigio would be a good choice.

Like millions of Americans, we have a plastic jar with a green top in our refrigerator. According to the label it contains “100% REAL grated Parmesan” cheese. The cap is ingeniously designed to make it easy to sprinkle cheese on a pizza or dump lots of it into commercial spaghetti sauces.

I use this cheese-in-a-jar and appreciate the convenience, but when I am making pasta dishes that call for Parmesan cheese like Spaghetti alla Carbonara or Seafood Fettucine, I use our cheese grater on a wedge of well-aged Parmesan. You can buy a plastic rotary cheese grater for under ten dollars. The first time you use it, you will discover that the cheese in that jar with the green top has lost a lot of its flavor.

Freshly grated Parmesan turns this simple chicken spaghetti sauce into something you won’t be afraid to serve to friends.