When Life Gives You Organic Unwaxed Lemons... Make Limoncello (Part One)

(I'm a bit reticent to post this, since I won't know how this recipe turned out for a bit more than another month. But at the same time, this and my oft-promised ode to all the ways I love to eat white beans are the most substantive posts I have in my on deck circle right now, and the weather... the weather is more limoncello-y than white bean-y)

My last day in Naples was grim and rainy and cold, and this fact scuttled every plan I came up with. I'd initially intended to go out to Capri, but there was no way I was getting on a hydrofoil to cross the rough, choppy bay and traipse around an island in gale force winds. I started out for Capodimonte, but it dawned on me about 3/4 of the way there that conditions involving strong wind, horizontal rain, and directions I wasn't quite sure of were less than ideal for a 2+ kilometer walk straight uphill.

So I turned back, and went to the Centro Storico, deciding to have a hot, hearty lunch and do whatever shopping was available on a Sunday afternoon. I found the first at the Antica Trattoria da Carmine, and while I was checking my phrase book for the word for "raisins" so I could ask the waiter if they were in my braciola (they were), I glanced across the street and saw the sign for Napoli Sotteranea, an underground tour of Naples' ancient aqueducts and a partially excavated Roman theatre that had been discovered beneath an ordinary apartment.

So after lunch, I signed up for the next English tour (if I'm going somewhere I'm likely to have a claustrophobic attack, I want to have it in my first language). But it didn't leave for an hour, so I wandered into the shop next door, which happened to be the Limone liquori fabbrica.

I initially thought I'd just be there long enough to buy a few TSA-approved sized bottles of limoncello for a few people I needed to take souvenirs back for. Instead, I spent about forty minutes having a half English, half Italian, entirely broken conversation with a charming old man. He asked me -- as pretty much everyone did that week -- why on earth I'd decided to come to Naples, and then how long ago my family had left, and what their names were, and where in Campania they'd lived.

And then we did several shots of various sorts of liquori, and then he showed me how to make the limoncello. And not just some shady recipe off the internet or out of Theresa Giudice's Skinny Italian cookbook -- the authentic, top secret shit.

The first step I cannot really share with you, because it involved my touching a horseshoe while standing inside a Roman well that the shop was built around, while the old man blessed me and my future efforts. So without that, your attempts may or may not be doomed to failure. But here's the rest of it, just in case.

You'll need about four pounds of untreated, unwaxed lemons.
You're then going to scrub the hell out of them. It matters that the peels are clean and the lemons haven't been sprayed, waxed, or treated with anything, because the peels are the bit you're going to use.
I am shit at peeling lemons -- I can't get a long strip to save my life, and if I get, say, a two inch piece off of it, it's going to be beautiful for the first half inch, then there'll be a quarter inch stretch with the pith still on, and so forth. So I zested the lemons instead. Yes, that is all the zest from four pounds of lemon. Yes, it doesn't look like a lot. I realize that. Be patient.

The next step is that you dehydrate your lemon peels. I have no experience dehydrating lemon peels -- or anything else, for that matter -- so I asked Carol, the one person I know who dehydrates things on the semi-regular. She informed me that I could either dehydrate them in the open air for 3 to 4 days, or on a parchment lined tray in my oven on its lowest setting for 2-3 hours.

I went with the latter, as I didn't want to wait for 3 to 4 days, or to try and find room in my wee apartment to keep plates or trays full of lemon zest sitting about for that long. So I spread my zests out on a parchmant lined baking sheet, and popped them in the oven on "Warm."

While they were dehydrating, I juiced my lemons. I used about half to make myself some delicious lemonade, and put the other half up to freeze.
These are handy little containers that I got at the CVS. I often use them for carrying my salad dressing to work so that my salad doesn't get soggy. They hold about a half cup of lemon juice each, which makes me seriously question the amount of salad dressing I use.

I checked on my zest periodically to make sure I'd know when all the liquid had been zapped out of it. After about four hours, I took it out of the oven.
Now, the next step for those of you who are good at peeling lemons is to grind your dehydrated peels into a fine powder. But if you're a lazy cheater who can't peel, like me, your dehydrated zest already pretty much is a fine powder. Woo hoo! Slacking pays off once again.
So you put your peels into the bottom of a big ass, airtight glass jug. And then you pour 1.5 liters of alcohol over it. I've seen recipes that say you can use vodka (I'm looking at you, Giudice), but the little old man in Naples was pretty firm about the need for using pure grain alcohol.
He was also pretty firm about needing to make a prayer to San Gennaro at every step of this process. So there he is -- the patron saint and martyred bishop of Naples, ready to guard my hooch.

Please note: if you choose to attempt this recipe without praying to San Gennaro, I cannot be held responsible for your failure. It's bad enough that you're trying to pull this off without having touched the horseshoe in the ancient well while having your efforts blessed by a little old man. You can't afford to skip any more steps.

I shook the jar vigorously while praying to San Gennaro. And then I put it in a dark place, with San Gennaro on top of the lid. I took the jar out once a day to shake it vigorously and pray. You want to do this for at least three days; I went for a week because I wanted it to be really lemony.

At the end of the week, we have...
....a giant's urine sample.

No, I kid. That's the color that the liquor achieved over the course of the week. It just looks like a giant's urine sample. And it smells like grim death, and/or the kitchen of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon house in the mid nineties after a particularly unhinged party.

You then strain the lemon zest out of the liquor. Bring 1.5 litres of water to boil, and stir in .75 kg of sugar (I know, I know -- it's rude that I'm not doing the metric conversions for you, but in all honesty, I only needed it for the lemons. The Everclear was measured in ml; my measuring cup has a litre marking on it as well; and I just set my kitchen scale to kg to measure the sugar) until it dissolves into a syrup.

Let the syrup cool, then add it to the infusion of alcohol and lemons. Give it one more good, vigorous shake, praying to San Gennaro while you do.
See how much less like a giant's urine sample it looks now?

And it looks even less like a giant's urine sample once it's all broken up into a bunch of little bottles instead of one big, giant, specimen jar looking jar.
Or in my case, a bunch of little bottles and the two Everclear bottles I started out with, since I apparently didn't buy enough little bottles during my initial little bottle buying shopping trip.

At any rate, it now has to sit for two months before anyone can drink it. So all those little bottles and those bigger bottles are now taking up a crapton of room in my refrigerator, while I wait until Labor Day to drink them -- praying to San Gennaro that they turn out alright the whole time, naturally.