I've always liked the idea of making my own cheese, well, actually, I've always liked the idea of making most of my food myself. In fact one of the first books I've ever bought for myself was Practical Self-Sufficiency by Sally Taylor. Reading about making cheese in Jam It, Pickle it, Cure It by Karen Solomon reignighted my enthusiasm.
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Few thing smell as good to me as onions frying in butter or especially bacon fat. It's always a good start to any tasty sauce or meal. In the Polish village tradition it can be a dish all onto itself. The poor man's answer to the rich man's butter - smalec.
Limoncello is an old, traditional, Italian lemon liqueur made by infusing vodka, grappa or some other hard liquor with lemons or lemon peel. It got some notoriety in the States recently by the excesses of Danny DeVito and Avril Lavigne but it has been enjoyed as an end-of-meal refresher and pick-me-up for centuries.
I'm big on tea. My favorite is black tea. I drink 2 or more cups every day. Sometimes I'll go for the naturally flavored black teas like jasmine, bergamot (Earl Grey) or rose. I like to have a Nalewka with my evening tea. Hmmm… what if I made a tea flavored Nalewka? Sounds easy enough and opens up a whole kettle of possibilities.
This was a staple for me when I was growing up in Warszawa. My grandmother, Maria, lived with us and did most of the cooking and putting up with me. Unfortunately, by the time I got into cooking Babcia was dead. This recipy is from memory - just like Babcia made them.
In SoCal the winter is citrus season - lemon trees, lime trees, mandarin trees, etc are all heavy with ripe fruit. I bet a lot of this backyard goodness just goes to waste. At this time of year, even though I try, the ground under my key lime tree is covered with rotting limes.
On Sunday Rachel, Margo and me went to the Long Beach Convention Center for the 2009 AKC/Eukanuba National Championships. This was our first time ever at a dog show. Rachel was very exited and she had high expectations of what it was going to be like. I don't think it lived up to that and I'm glad because it's like your first Star Trek convention - you don't want to get addicted.
About 4 years ago my in-laws, Syd and Marcello, gave me a pomegranate tree for my birthday. I planted it, curb side, in front of the house and it has done rather well. This year I got quite a few pomegranates but the neighbors took most of them. I decided the last 2 had to go into making a Nalewka.
This one, as well as several other recipes I've made, was inspired by the book 
Krupnik is a very old Polish Nalewka (vodka infusion or tincture) that was very popular in the Dzikie Pola (wild steppes) and Kresy (outskirts) areas of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth. Before the days of refined sugar honey was the most common sweetener - my recipe gives this traditional honey liqueur some 
Dill pickles, ogórki kiszone, half sours, ogórki małosolne - it's got to be one of my favorite foods. A sour, sour pickle on a slice of rye bread with a little butter, a half sour straight out of the jar as a midday snack or a bowel of sour pickle soup on a cold day - it just makes me feel good.
So when does a Nalewka stop being just a liquor and starts being a liqueur? It's all in the sugar, but, the funny thing is nobody can give an exact point of transition. To some people most traditional Nalewki are liqueurs because they often have some sugar. Well I think this Nalewka made the full journey from liquor to liqueur and became a cordial.
