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| Home made preserved lemons. So Easy. |
I love North African food
and the big zesty flavours of Tagines are a favourite in my house. Once you get
your head around the basic flavours: cumin, coriander, paprika, cinnamon, ginger and preserved lemon, Moroccan cooking
can be very easy throw together. These
hearty one-pot dishes make cleaning up a breeze and you can prepare everything
in 15-20 minutes, then just leaving it all to stew long and slow. Great for busy
families.
I was lucky, living in Europe, to have middle-eastern groceries on my doorstep and
at very reasonable prices. I was disheartened to find some of the staples of
this cuisine only available in the posh delis of Sydney
The upside of this outrage is that I’ve
always wanted to make my own, and this was the motivation I needed to get
around to doing it. It was so easy and the jars look so pretty; I’ll never buy
them again.
This is how it went…
3 x 500ml preserving jars (sterilized)
20 med-large juicy lemons
Salt
Peppercorns
Bay leaves
Cloves
Cut 10 of the lemons into wedges, 8 per
lemon, then carefully de-seed them.
Cut the remaining 10 lemons in half and
thoroughly juice them. Set this juice aside.
Press a layer of lemon wedges into the
bottom of each jar.
Cover each layer with: 2 teaspoons of
salt, 3 peppercorns, 1 clove and a bay leaf.
Firmly press in another layer of lemon
wedges, and repeat the salting and spicing. Continue with this process until
the jars are almost full to the top, you should only have 2-3 cm of space at
the top of the jar.
Fill each jar with the lemon juice
squeezed earlier.
All you need to do now is find somewhere
cool and dark to store them; under the stairs or at the top of a cool cupboard.
They will be ready in a month, but you should check them after a few days. If
you have not used enough salt there may be some gas in the jars that needs to
be released; simply open the jars briefly to release it and then close them
until they are ready. How easy is that?
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