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.

Gastroporn

I arrived home early today and discovered an article about the joys of shopping in fresh food markets. These are some of the less lauded markets, but their fare deserves no less laudation. The best way to stimulate the appetite – or perhaps jealousy – is by having a good read. Here it is: http://www.theage.com.au/news/entertainment/epicure/my-market/2009/03/09/1236447124035.html

Alternatively, you can survey the Aussie cuisine website (http://www.cuisine.com.au/home/) which contains sensible recipes with sensible market fare. These are the kind of dishes that regularly end up on the table here, so get yourself over.

You can browse by cuisine, wine type or vegetable. You can browse by whatever fish or meat you desire. A wonderful feature of the website is the Three Ingredients search. Look in your fridge, find three items, and the database matches what you’ve got with what you can make with it. The database is mostly wonderful, but tends to assume that everyone has smoked salmon in their fridges as well.

I was less sure about the kiddie-friendly recipe for ‘Sausages snakes on avocado-potato mash’.

Not for the Faint Hearted

The Age is not for the faint-hearted. As a fan of Jacobean revenge tragedy and not adverse to the odd bit of classic blood horror, I still found the following story far more hideous than Silence of the Lambs or Hannibal even with its man-eating pigs. It’s the one about the Chinese immigrant in Canada, and only read it if really curious about why I put it in the same paragraph as Jacobean tragedy – http://www.theage.com.au/world/beheader-not-criminally-responsible-for-murder-20090306-8qok.html

Somehow, somewhere, I wanted to make a connection between the media and horrorporn; anime and those Japanese horror media stories, and games like Carmageddon and cartoons like Scooby Doo and increased violence among children. For that story, and again it is for real, see: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1159766/Cartoon-violence-makes-children-aggressive.html. A researcher into the latter link, Jennifer Linder, said: ‘There is ample evidence that physical aggression on TV is associated with increases in aggressive behaviour, but there was little until this study that has shown a link between televised aggression and resulting aggression among children.’

Anyway, back to the hideousness, the media and horrorporn – and let’s add in gastroporn too (and I don’t mean Nigella). Then the day after The Age went all Peter Greenaway, fusing food, gore and grossness with the following offal story beginning “Snouts, tongues, lips, ears, livers, kidneys, brains and blood, heaps of it”: http://www.theage.com.au/national/diners-rediscover-blood-and-guts-20090307-8ryo.html. The cover picture shows once and for all that brains are better than brawn

I was vowing to return to my vegetarian roots when I came across something even more obscene: the recipe for Scooby Doo Aubergine Burgers, with or without white chocolate sauce: http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/home/you/article-1032877/Scooby-Doo-aubergine-burgers.html

What DID you give up for Lent, by the way?

Cars can Kill You

We all know that driving can kill you. So, too, can the kind of road rage that characterises anyone driving anywhere north of Auckland in the wake of the opening of the tolled Orewa-Warkworth Puhoi bypass. After giving drivers a scenic and sometimes underground bypass, it bottlenecks them into a single lane, succeeding only in shifting the problem from one bottleneck to another. That’s New Zealand summed up in a nutshell: not known for planning skills.

We all know that in addition to the road toll (this time ‘toll’ means the people in toto who die on roads) and road rage, you are highly likely to be involved in an altercation with a Remuera Tractor (a Toorak Tractor in Melbourne, but a direct equivalent) which has more insurance than you do when Madame steps out to the hot Italian bread shop in her melt-free make-up and Gucci stilletos. Other problems include seagulls shitting currosively on your enamel. in Melbourne that role goes to the flying Foxes, whose dung is so strong that people here take out insurance that lists it as a liability. And then there are people who break in to steal your Tomtom or Navman or that pile of Celine Dion CDs you are stupid enough to leave in sight.

But that’s not the end of it. According to Melbourne’s The Age today, you can also cook to death in your car in 8 minutes. Just add salt. Have a read of this: http://www.theage.com.au/national/cars-a-quick-death-trap-20090206-7zzm.html