Tarte au Citron

Helen Mae, Derrick (my husband), and I are house sitting this week for my lovely aunt and uncle who are vacationing in Chicago. And let me tell you, it's pretty fun. They live in a beautiful old house in Mid City- a historic New Orleans neighborhood located between Uptown and Downtown. It's a part of the city which experienced a good deal of flooding during Katrina- but it's also a part of the city that has been determined to make a comeback.My Aunt Dottie's house was one that flooded and because it was a very, very old house all of the electrical wiring was under the house instead of in the attic- you can imagine the kind of damage that occurred. It took them well over a year to get back into their old home. However, the small silver lining was that they were able to use the insurance not only to fix things back to how they used to be, but to actually do some renovation to parts of the house that they would have liked to have done before. The biggest change was an enormous extension to their kitchen- they knocked down the wall to their den and just turned the whole thing into a glorious cooking, dining, lounging space. It is absolutely my dream kitchen!!


So anyway, I've been loving cooking and baking in it for the week- and to top things off, my aunt told me to use the pie dough that she had mixed up but had been unable to use before she left. Yesterday I made this beautiful Tarte au Citron using Ina Garten's recipe for lemon curd. I had never made lemon curd before- and although mine took more than double the time to thicken on the stove- it turned out beautiful and delicious! Enjoy!