After The New Goodlife’s fabulous top 5 post about lemons earliers in the week and Bek from Bek’s Backyard’s adventures with Limoncello I thought it only appropriate I continue with the lemon theme for this week’s Thursday Kitchen Cupboard post.
My parents have two well established lemon trees at their place. A large Eureka lemon and a much smaller but still very productive Meyer lemon. Everytime I go to their place I come home with a bag of lemons and recently, given Mr 3’s penchant for lemon picking, the bags have been particular big.
I use a lot of lemons, in salad dressings, in marinades, with chicken, zest in pasta, to make lemonade, and in the occasional sweet dish. This year I also decided to make limoncello for Christmas gifts. You can see the rind marinating in vodka, on the left, in the picture below. The other thing I made this week was a new batch of preserved lemon, that’s them in the jar on the right.
Preserved Lemons
Preserved lemons are easy to make. I use a fairly standard recipe and it always comes out well. To make them: cut each lemon as though you were going to cut them into quarters but do not cut them completely through. The lemons should open out at the top but be joined at the bottom. Pour a tablespoon of salt into each lemon and then reform the lemon and place it into a sterilized glass jar. Pack the jar full with as many lemons as will fit comfortably. Then add as much lemon juice as you need to cover the lemons completely.
It is up to you whether or not to add spices, I sometimes do, sometimes don’t. To this batch I added a teaspoon or so of both peppercorns and coriander seeds.
The preserved lemons will then need to sit for at least a month and its a good idea to give the bottle a quick shake every now and then.
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