Month of Joy: Raspberry Curd by Sarah Gailey

Thaw three-quarters of a bag of frozen raspberries. One quarter of that bag was used to infuse a little gin, because C had a hard day and it seemed like a nice idea to make them a cocktail with raspberry-infused gin. The cocktail was a hit, and you watched a movie together and laughed a lot at Al Pacino’s performance, and the dog snored softly throughout the entire thing.

Wrap up the raspberries in cheesecloth and squeeze them out as hard as you can. The raspberry juice will be a deep beautiful fucshia, and it will run down your hands, and when you lick a drop of it from the side of your own wrist you will be stunned by how intense the flavor is.

(You will only need half a cup of this juice. If you have any extra beyond that, combine it with prosecco and share it with whoever is keeping you company in the kitchen. Pour the raspberry juice in last, so you can watch the way it suffuses the wine like ink in water.)

Add the juice of a quarter of a lemon to the half-cup of raspberry juice, to make sure there’s enough acid in the juice to denature the egg proteins later. Savor the shape of the phrase “denature the proteins.” Linger on the way it feels to know that this is the reason so many curds are citrus-based.

Separate eight eggs. Crack them gently, then drop the whole egg into your palm and shake it gently back and forth until all the whites have run between your fingers and into a bowl, so you’re just cupping the yolk in your hand. There are faster ways to separate eggs, but this way you get to feel the weight of the yolk as it settles against your skin. Save the whites for later, when you will use them to make an angel-food cake.

Cut eight tablespoons of butter into ten pieces, using a knife that you sharpened that morning. The dog will beg for a piece of the butter, but you mustn’t give her any because her pancreas is old and tired and can’t handle it. She will beg by doing her very best ‘sit’ and looking at you patiently, and wagging just the tip of her tail, because she trusts that if she waits long enough, there will be butter for her.

Add a cup of sugar to the juice. You really ought to do this in the saucepan, but you can’t resist the way the bowl keeps things from spreading out, so that you can watch as the sugar dissolves and that deep, rich raspberry-pink slowly climbs the hill of white. Stir to dissolve, as much as you can, then pour into a small saucepan, scraping out the bowl.

Turn on the heat under the saucepan. While you wait for the juice and sugar to begin bubbling, stir together the egg yolks with a fork. When the juice and sugar start to simmer, take them off the heat. Pour half of the hot liquid into the egg yolks in a slow, steady stream, whisking the egg yolks the entire time. This is called ‘tempering’. It will heat up the yolks without cooking them. Take obscure pride in the knowledge that you are doing it Right.

When this is done, reverse the procedure. Return the saucepan to the heat and whisk the liquid constantly while pouring the tempered yolks into the saucepan in a slow, steady stream. Then, stir the liquid in the saucepan slowly, gently, turning the liquid at the bottom of the pan so it thickens evenly. Soon, it will be thick enough to coat the back of your spoon. It looks like it could be finished, now, but it isn’t. It’s going to get even better.

Turn off the heat and drop one piece of butter into the pan. Stir and watch as it slowly melts. Once it’s nearly gone, drop in a second piece of butter. You’ll do this ten times in all, and toward the end you’ll start to feel impatient, like maybe you should just drop in all the butter at once. But you’ll wait, and you’ll do it one piece at a time, and when the last piece has melted away, you’ll look into your pan and realize what you’ve done.

Remove the spoon from the pan. Drag the tip of your middle finger across it. The fresh raspberry curd is warm, buttery, and bright. Pour it into a jar to set — it’s still warm and liquid enough that it will self-level, so you can fill the jar right to the top. There is some that will not fit into the jar you’ve chosen; pour this into a small dish, and walk out into the living room with that dish and a plate of shortbread cookies to dip in it. Sit down with the people you love, and a glass of prosecco with raspberry juice in it, and a dog who is still sure that she will be allowed to participate in the meal.

Well done.

Hugo award winner Sarah Gailey is an internationally published writer of fiction and nonfiction. Their nonfiction has been published by Mashable and the Boston Globe, and they are a regular contributor for Tor.com and Barnes & Noble. Their most recent fiction credits include Fireside Fiction, Tor.com, and Uncanny Magazine. Their debut novella, River of Teeth, was published in 2017 via Tor.com and was a 2018 Hugo and Nebula award finalist. They have a novel forthcoming from Tor Books in Spring 2019. You can find links to their work at www.sarahgailey.com; find them on social media @gaileyfrey