amethyst73 | Lemon pasta remixed

Remember this post, where I talked about lemons and recipes thereto? In particular, the pasta sauce involving cream and wine and the seizure of the dish as a result?

I tried the recipe again last night. I was careful to keep the wine at room temperature, and I added the solid ingredients (including 2 cups of frozen peas) to the warm milk and lemon peel mix. And turned the heat off. I added the wine very slowly, noting that it still had a tendency to do some minor curdling of the milk in the local area, but I could keep that effect to kind of a minimum if I stirred it around immediately after adding. Once the wine was all added, the milk had a kind of thick texture, which was probably more like what's supposed to happen. Adding the room-temperature lemon juice thickened it more (acid also precipitates proteins nicely).

Adding the still-hot pasta to the sauce, however, completed the 'cooking'/curdling of the milk.

Happily, the (thickened) milk was pretty well distributed in with the other ingredients, so we ended up with lots of tiny bits of curd, rather than the large lumps we ended up with on our first try. *shrug* I'm guessing that that's just... what's supposed to happen. I note that the recipe does suggest saving some of the pasta water in case you need more liquid when you're mixing it all together. This instruction may indicate that you're supposed to have a mix of (mostly) solids when you get to the end stage.