Lime and Long Pepper Bars

Lots of limes!

I've spoken before about my love for both spicy desserts and the Thai long pepper. Long pepper works in these contexts because it's pretty spicy, but not searingly hot. It's got a slight sweetness and hint of anise that black pepper or crushed cayenne lack. And it's also dry, so blends really nicely with sugar in the food processor (even if it causes a minor coughing fit when I take the cover off). Stick a few long peppercorns in the food processor with sugar. Process for a minute or two. Strain the results. The result can change any dessert, often for the better.

Yesterday I decided to try this with lime bars. Let me say first that I'm pretty picky about lemon or lime bars, which can often be quite mediocre. I like mine to have a crust that's crisp and has some taste; not mushy and a weak base for the lemon/lime part. I like the lemon/lime part to be intensely flavored, with lots of fresh juice. It should overwhelm the senses with fresh and bright citrus, not make you vaguely recall lemon-scented cleansers. And finally, they should be luscious and creamy in texture, not crumbly or dry. Easy, right?

I've probably tried seven or eight recipes for these over the past few years, and have settled on two that I like a lot. My favorite (as for so many things) is from Joann Chang's Flour cookbook. It has an incredible amount of rich, delicious lemon curd piled on a light, crispy shortbread. The recipe is a bit over the top, though, as it requires 3 sticks of butter, 12 eggs, some heavy cream and the juice of 14-16 lemons or limes!  Not something I do every day, but well worth it on special occasions.

Mixing the filling: sugar, eggs,
a little flour, lime juice, lime zest

For a more everyday lemon or lime bar, I love the recipe in Alice Medrich's Pure Dessert. These lemon bars have all of the key properties (to review: crisp, tart, creamy, delicious), and can be thrown together in an hour or so (including baking time). Plus the ingredient list is eminently reasonable: 1/2 cup of citrus juice, 3 eggs, 1 stick of butter; plus, of course, some flour, sugar and salt. Her secrets? Bake the crust until it's pretty brown before adding the lemon/lime filling. Use lots of juice and fresh zest in the filling. Tastiness.

Crisply baked crust just
before adding the filling

Having shared my favorite lemon/lime bar recipes, back to the long pepper. Black pepper is known to pair well with citrus. They show up together all the time in sorbets, shortbread, etc. (My mother is now saying to me silently, "They show up together all the time only in your kitchen..." Trust me, though, they do.) Surely you'll at least concede that lemon pepper chicken was all the rage for a while in the late 90s, right?

Anyway, I wanted to try spicy lime bars, and I had some long pepper left over from that trip to Indonesia last spring. I also had some limes that I had picked up very cheaply (10 / $1!) on Devon St. here in Chicago (on which I will have to write a post once I've explored more). I wanted to use it up before it loses its flavor. So I blended it with most of the sugar for the lime bar recipe.  The recipe calls for 1.25 cups; I made 1 cup of long pepper sugar and used it for all of the sugar in the crust (1/4 cup) and most of the sugar in the filling (1 cup), using plain sugar for the rest. On its own, the long pepper sugar is very spicy.

The result is a pleasantly spicy lime bar, according to me and one friend (who, notably, is often averse to spicy foods and isn't afraid to tell me when she doesn't like stuff). The heat of the long pepper is palpable and lingers for a couple minutes after each bite. But it doesn't build or burn; just kind of tingles. And it doesn't obliterate the lime. I'd actually consider using a bit less long pepper sugar in the filling next time, but my friend liked it as is. An interesting experiment.

I think it would be really interesting to do the same thing with black pepper and taste them together. My guess is that the long pepper would have more burn, and that the black pepper would be more assertive and throw off the balance. I've got enough long pepper for one more recipe, probably, so stay tuned.