House Photos

Recipe: Moroccan Preserved Lemons

Moroccan Preserved Lemons

Choose ripe, smooth, thin-skinned lemons without flaws for the best results. Thick-skinned lemons are not suitable.

Only the peel is used in cooking plus the juice from the pulp (which is discarded although I have used it). The flavour is unique – the peel has lost its bitter taste.

16 small (thin-skinned) ripe lemons
coarse salt
lemon juice

1. Scrub lemons with a stiff brush then place them in a large glass, plastic, stainless steel or glazed earthenware container. Cover with cold water and allow lemons to soak for 3 – 5 days, changing the water each day.

2. Drain lemons. Using the point of a sharp knife, insert knife 6mm (1/4 inch) from the bud end of each lemon and make four incisions lengthwise to within 6mm (1/4 inch) of the other end. Then cut through incisions in each lemon so that lemons are cut completely through both sides, but still held together at both ends.

3. Insert 1/4 teaspoon coarse salt into centre of each lemon, squeezing them open. Arrange lemons in sterilized Kilner jars. Sprinkle lemons in each jar with 1 tablespoon coarse salt. Add strained juice of one lemon to each jar and pour in enough boiling water to cover lemons.

4. Leave lemons to steep in this mixture for at least 3 weeks before using them. You will find that the salty, oily pickling juice is honey thick and highly flavoured. Use it in salads instead of vinegar. You may also use it to add savour to tangines. The lemons will keep in this mixture indefinitely if stored in a dry place.

5. To use preserved lemons, remove lemons from jar and rinse well under cold running water. Cut away pulp from each quarter but first squeezing juice from pulp to use in recipe, and discard pulp.
You may use quarters of peel whole or sliver them into salads. Never touch preserved lemons in jar with an oily or greasy spoon as fat will spoil the pickling mixture. Don’t worry if a white film forms on preserved lemons in the jar; just rinse off before using lemons.

Moving, moving, moved

It’s been a week. A week to the hour. A week ago now the last item was moved into the new house in Vermont Sth, VIC 3133. We are unsure if it’s a good thing or not that ‘Neighbours’ is made around the corner and that Kylie has surely trampled our lawn. The street is nothing like ‘Ramsay Street’ and hopefully won’t attract the same number of tourists, unless they are our invited guests.

Anyway, we have a new house and home, with its own well-appointed garden made up of a series of garden areas. There are roses, palms, breaths-of-heaven, camellias, nadinas, pittispora, cypresses – and there’s a protea. Not a king protea, but what must therefore be a queen. Soon, there will be more. There is birdsong, and so far only one possum dared to squark and screech. We have no ‘Hello possums’ doormat; instead we have a watchful owl with glaring predatorial eyes. There will be more owls.

Since then we’ve achieve the usual round of ritualistic things:

• Last-minute conveyancer and bank negotiating and hoping the planets do line up on the day at the appointed hour (they did)
• Unwrapping, unpacking furniture items and bits and bobs
• Arranging, rearranging and again rearranging furniture
• Undoing 100 boxes (literally 100, exactly 100) of books, DVDs, CDs, kitchen items, chinaware, miscellaneous and the usual rubbish you thought you’d thrown out last move
• Cleaning, recleaning and sterilising cupboard interiors, shower cabinets and all surfaces to expunge the peril of the pervious owners and exorcise their spirits
• Bidding for new furniture – that which was absolutely essential including two Persian rugs – at auction and getting them delivered
• Getting new sheets (essential) and lots of freshness for the guest room
• Getting the central heating, unused for years it seems, fixed
• Getting the sauna, unused for years, onto its own electrical circuit so it can be used and infused with pine – without shorting and blowing out the electrics in the bungalow (a much nicer word than Granny flat)
• Getting the internet and phone on (a biggie over here – they cut us off as soon as they put us on because their Indian supervisor did not communicate with the Pakistani one – and so harder than you could imagine)
• Arranging books and DVDs and CDs as easily and logically as possible without over-cataloguing anal retentively
• Folding the aforementioned 100 boxes, and associated bubble wrap, and putting in the large workshed/ gardenshed/ poolshed we didn’t know we had but am so glad we do
• Finding out about banal local routines like when’s rubbish day and how water metering works
• Paying an unending round of initial bills and last readings-bills from the previous house
• Sussing out the local malls (there are many) and Bunnings Barns and getting those essential things you forget about (like tidies for cutlery drawers, laundry baskets and vacuum cleaner bags)
• Ensuring there’s enough wine in stock from the local Dan Murphy’s (luckily one tram stop away)
• Taking a cursory walk around the neighbourhood (East is better than west) and looking at local houses (respectable upper brick and tile architecture with cypress trees and box hedging, mostly)

Before that was the less rewarding hideousness of packing up the old house and cleaning it top to toe to leave it spick and span in the hope of a full bond retrieval (still n the future). The walls were starting to crack due to shifting grounds and there were doors that no longer closed. Nevertheless, Mr Property Manager has hiked the rent another $40.00 in counter-intuition to market forces. No wonder there are no bites despite four open homes so far (one on which Mr Idiot Property Manager organised on our moving day despite our warning him against it). Another ordeal was returning the keys. Mr Fucking Moronic Property Manager did not even tell us his office had moved from Richmond to Toorak (that tells you a lot about him, if you know the Melbourne places). So I turned up to open day and returned them then. I think I was the only person there. The Hawthorn Victorian cottage was a wonderful introit to Melbourne, but a year on it’s time to say goodbye and hello.

Besides, an adjacent section, the possum house (a derelict long-empty place, every neighbourhood has one, with many holes in the roof and cars growing in the back yard, you know the picture) is due to be bulldozed, probably to make way for a zillion town houses on a pocket handkerchief – you know the story. Which means noise. And temporary extra possum chaos. And further we get to move away from ‘Maggot Face’ the local uncontrolled bichon-friese-type yap-dog that yelped every time an autumn leaf blew into its yard or every time a passer-by breathed. Good riddance to maggot face. May the new residents maintain their sanity. Another month and there may have been blood.

Yes a year to the day, to the hour, to the minute. August 1 was when I arrived, at first, for the first time. It’s been a short year. I still feel like a newcomer, like a virgin in a brothel. Many roads are still untrodden and I still need orientation in the inner city, though my sense of direction has worked out all the main inner arterials so I can travel without a map. Beyond those limits there is vastness and endless suburbia. Those places are unnegotiated dark places where there be monsters. We are at the edge of civilisation, the last but one stop on a tram line. The tram means you are still in the city limits. It also means you are 20 kms out, which in Melbourne is still within the heart. And hence I’m closer by a full 13 kms to one of the university campuses (some would say campi, for a laugh) I frequent. This campus, you understand is the one famed for bizarreness I’ve described before and now for robot sumo (http://www.theage.com.au/national/robot-sumos-do-battle-for-title-20090731-e4bh.html). Anyway, back to the house. It’s great the neighbourhood is quiet, and so far; no yapping dogs. From my office I can see a pink horizon over treetops. And so the anniversary minute has gone.

But the rains have come. The second that naysayers dared to say ‘fire risk 2010’ down came the clouds and the waters fell. Already they are adjusting their dire predictions. And we might be able to apply to get a swimming pool put in without H20 guilt. Besides, Google Earth tells us all the neighbours have them. Our nigh-arthritic bodies and untoned gym-lycra-techno-loathing conditions demand a swimming pool. We have the spa, but need the space. Let the breaststroke militate against encroaching bad joints and tensions. Let’s hope the bank agrees (so far so good). Donations and bequests to the swimming pool fund are also gratefully accepted.

Moving house is one thing; I’ve also moved offices at work. Yesterday. If I see another box, I might scream. I’ve more unpacking to do on Monday. But this means a change of group for my discipline, and this can only be a good thing, given the history I inherited when I arrived. Hopefully I’ll be around scholars this time rather than boozers. Hopefully we’ll get managed and not bullied this time. It seems (and those of you connected to Auckland or Otago Museums will know what I mean) many workplaces have bullying managers-from-other-cultures employed in the name of multiculturalism – but given absolutely no cultural training in such issues as the inappropriateness of cronyism. They are afforded no communication skills briefing or people-skills education. It is only partly their fault that they’re promoted beyond their proverbial level of competence. They spend their lives saving face instead of apologizing and digging ever-deeper holes.

I very much like the new house: tidy brick and tile, no maintenance, spacious interior, lots of light, garden vistas from every window, few visible neighbours. My study has a large Chinese rug and an oriental flavour and a twin-column oak desk with a green leather top that I had to have at auction. I have three large bookcases and the place feels studious. There are three other bedrooms in the house and two bathrooms. The living area is spacious and has several sections – the art nouveau lounge with the new Persian rug; the music corner; the reading corner that might one day, once the pool is a done deal, be the harpsichord corner. The dining area adjoins the newish kitchen with lovely steel appliances and is also spacious. The large table and six dining chairs look small. It’s nice to have a central hall area, great for china cabinets, and good to have a spacious laundry with more cupboards than you need to store napisan and Fab in. The extra bungalow with its own kitchen and bathroom facilities is a bonus, and is a summer house and music room and den. It also has a large new wooden bookcase, but now demands a chaise lounge. It adjoins the sheltered patio and spa areas that will be wonderful for summer living and quaffing Spanish reds as the sun sets. Nobody has yet uttered the word ‘BBQ’ but they will.