Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement's

I love my citrus fruits.  If you made me pick a favorite, it would be hard as each one has it's advantages and each shines in different dishes.  Oranges - sweet and juicy, great on their own or in dishes, lime - fantastically fragrant zest, lemons - slightly less sharp than lime but that heady fragrance!  Even grapefruit is great with sugar syrup!

But the ones that I cook most with are lemons.  They can be quite costly in Singapore some times and it's not like I cook with them every single day to warrant me buying them fresh every week.  So I buy them when they are cheap and freeze them.

Obviously, one doesn't freeze the lemon just like that, unless you cook the entire lemon whole in your dish.  So I separate out the zest and the juice.  First I wash the lemons clean and dry them well and then proceed to zest them.  I have a confession to make - I don't own a microplane nor do I own a zester.  I use a fruit peeler and take off the zest in huge chunky pieces and freeze them. If my recipe calls for thin zest, I just chop the zest up finely.  It has worked well for me all this time but I'm sure purists would be up in arms seeing how I actually have a fairly significant amount of pith on the zest.  Again, the untrained palate of my husbands can't detect the difference so I blissfully continue what I'm doing until such a time where I can get my hands on a zester.

Then I cut the lemons in half and juice them.  Again, I do not have a juicer.  Terrible isn't it?  I cut my lemons right down the thickest point and use a dessert spoon to break each sac open nicely and twist my spoon round and round.  The juice drips into a bowl and I strain it through a sieve right into my ice trays.

The zest goes straight into small ziplock bags (which I reuse) - 1 lemon, 1 bag.  The juice is frozen into ice cubes and I bag them into ziplock bags too.  1 ice cube of juice is about 2 tablespoonfuls of juice.  I label the bags with dates on sticky labels and know that I'll always have lemon at hand!

Then the remains of the pulp and all go into a bowl with some water and get blitzed in the microwaves for 2 minutes.  Then the oven gets a good wipe down.  Clean and fresh smelling!  And all the lemons get used up!