Citrus on a Sunday

The cooking this weekend was really all about Sunday lunch, bookended by dinner with Ant. at Mamak on Saturday night and excellent burritos at N. and D.'s place this evening.  A.W-D. was the willing victim today and the theme was citrus. A pea, prosciutto and lemon risotto from an older issue of Delicious and a sour-cream, orange and raisin pie from the one Donna Tart magazine I bought.  The risotto had a bright, clean taste from the lemon over the top of the sweet/salty prosciutto and the sweet peas. Add lots of parmesan and what can possibly go wrong? It was also a bit interesting in that it used leeks rather than onion as a starting point which kept the flavour subtle. By the way, do you know why leeks are always such a pain to clean? It's because farmers want to keep the body of the leek as pale as possible so they heap up dirt around it to block as much of the stem from the sun as they can. McGee also notes that the slippery texture of the leeks after cooking is down to the long-chain carbohydrates. The flavour of leeks (and onions etc) is down to the way that they use sulfur to defend themselves, Sulfur is drawn from the soil and converted into four types of "chemical ammunition" that float around in the cell together with a remote trigger enzyme waiting for the cell wall to be damaged.  When this happens the enzyme splits open the molecules and we get the smell and irritation.  Specifically it's the lacrimator in the cell that makes you cry, It hits your nerve endings and shatters into hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide and sulfuric acid. How cool is that? And I have no idea why this is underlined and I can't work out how to stop it. Sorry.