Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Pistachio Lemon bread with Lemon butter



Judith Olney has a chapter in her book called Essence Breads and their butters, and Maij decided to try the Pistachio/Lemon bread. It is more of a cake than a real bread and it is quite heavenly to eat. After it had been made we cut a couple of slices and had it with coffee on the balcony.

The strange thing about this bread is that after it has been baked you prick the top of it with a wooden kebab stick and then pour a "glaze" over it, which is basically 1/3 a cup of sugar and the juice from a lemon. I thought it would make it sodden, but somehow the bread absorbed it all and became very moist and succulent with a tang to smack your lips to.




If that is not lemony enough for you then you also have lemon butter to go along with it, which is made with 8 tbl spoons of butter, 2 tablespoons of sugar and 1 teaspoon of lemon zest. As you can see from the photo the butter just melted into the hot bread once it was taken from the tin, and the pistachios were dotted through the bread with green nutty goodness.

Verdict: Mahtava!!!

1 comment:

Apprentice said...

We have a version we call lemon drizzle cake, which is a rice flour sponge with the same lemon/sugar syrup trickled through while it's still warm. Seriously moresome, but the pistachios add a dimension, definitely. I'll try it when baking season comes around again. That's autumn for me, it goes along with the mega jam and chutney sessions.

Do let me know if you'd like some chutney recipes to go with any of your lovely fish dishes.