Preserved lemons
Preserved lemons ( i.e. lemons preserved in salt and their own juices) are a classic of the Xandrian world where the fruit almost throws itself at you each year in such abundance that it is difficult to know what to do with them. However, the resourceful poor for whom their is no such thing as a glut, have offered up one solution to keep these wonderful sunshine fruits over the cooler winter months as well as to brighten up their otherwise dark kitchens with little pieces of preserved sunshine.
The recipe is pretty simple. There is lemon, lemon juice and salt. That and the inexorable passage of time. (About six weeks as a minimum.) The most important thing of all is to make sure that you use un-waxed lemons. Waxed lemons keep their shape and do not 'cure' as well as un-waxed fruit as you might expect.
You will need some decent sized jars to make this all worthwhile and given that the fruit are so pretty, you might like to have nice looking jars. We use some large old olive jars.
Ingredients
- A lot of un-waxed lemons for salting
- Some un-waxed lemons for squeezing
- A packet of salt (preferably sea salt)
- water ( tap or bottled, it's all the same to the recipe)
Method
Cut the top and bottom off the lemon. Just enough to allow the fruit to sit upright on a table.
Make a cut in the top of each lemon as though you were cutting it in half but stop about two-thirds of the way down. Turn each lemon upside down and rotate by ninety degrees and make another slice at right-angles to the first in the same way. Repeat for each lemon.
Pour as much salt into each cut as will fit and then pack the lemons into a clean, sterilised jar. Pack as full as you can get them.
When you can get no more lemon s into the container, squeeze the juice out of some of the remaining unsalted lemons. Top up the jar with lemon juice and making sure that the jar is full, lid.
If there are more lemons to use, repeat.
Leave for about six weeks but shake up the contents now and again.
Observations
The cuts in the lemons should not quite cut the lemon in half or quarters. You can't over salt salted lemons so pack in as much salt as you can. If there are large spaces left, you can use half lemons, preferably cut lengthways. Try to ensure that the lemons are submerged. If you are unsure then it would pay to shake the jars occasionally to make sure that lemon juice and salt are covered over the lemons. I have read that if the top lemons grow mould this cut be scraped off. I have never experienced it so I have not tried it: not sure that I would want to! They keep for some time, going darker towards orange coloured, the older they get.
Source: The Book of Dwarf here.
