Gardening with Gael - Limes for cooking and cocktails

 

“Limes,” said my son Nick on a recent trip back from the US, “are a horrendous price in the US. The drought severely affected production. There are very few.”

Here in New Zealand we are fortunate to still have a healthy production of limes. Every lime tree that I have grown has produced great quantities of fruit. Wind has been the biggest enemy of my limes. A few years ago a cyclone hit and twisted my largest lime tree right out of the ground. This year I planted a new lime tree up at the Block and stupidly left the fruit on it. The bad weather a few weeks ago tore the poor little tree to shreds. If I had taken the fruit off it for this year it may well have survived.

This year I also planted my first kaffir lime tree [citrus hystrix ]. The leaves from the kaffir lime are useful in Thai, Vietnamese and Mexican cooking. They look completely different from the common lime tree, described when I Googled them as having an ‘hourglass’ shape because they are made up of the leaf and a flattened leaf – like stalk or petiole.

The fruit is small, round and bumpy. The flesh a stronger green than the usual lime. My sister Philippa has a bumper crop from her kaffir lime tree this year. The flesh and rind are more astringent than in the common lime and there is only so much you can use in cooking. During a Jamie Oliver cooking programme, he suggested that the very best lime marmalade was made from kaffir limes. Philippa decided to give it a go. She Googled recipes and hints and then made the best lime marmalade I have ever tasted. It is also the greenest lime marmalade I have ever seen.

Other limes include Key, Persian and Desert.

Key lime [citrus aurantiifolia] is the lime associated with the Florida Keys and the main ingredient in a Key lime pie. The tree is small and shrubby with lots of thorns. The flavour is distinctive and can be bitter.

Persian limes [citrus x latifolia] are also known as Tahitian limes and this is the lime tree most commonly grown here. The fruit is a hybrid and possibly a lime/lemon cross. The flesh is more lemon coloured when ripened and there are less thorns on the tree. This is a sweet lime and widely used in drinks, marmalade and cooking.

Desert lime [citrus glauca] is native to Queensland and New South Wales in Australia. Resilient to heat, cold and drought this tough little lime has been extensively cleared. It is used in beverages, marmalade and glace fruit.

Limes are also excellent in cocktails. Freshly squeezed lime juice is essential to both margaritas and cosmopolitans.

KAFFIR LIME: Makes the best marmalade they say.
 

Philippa’s Kaffir Lime Marmalade First she squeezed the limes and then left the juice to settle. Once settled she scooped the pith off the top. The peel was sliced finely and covered with water and left to soak. She said for about 12 hours. She repeated this process at least twice to get rid of the bitterness – that’s three lots of 12 hours. The fruit are very astringent and this is absolutely necessary. Once the extreme bitterness has gone just proceed as for normal marmalade i.e. boil with sugar.