Recipe:Guest Blogger Amanda Miller's Salt-Preserved Lemons
I'M DELIGHTED TO INAUGURATE WHAT I HOPE WILL BE AN ONGOING SERIES OF GUEST BLOGS WITH THIS POST FROM TORONTO-BASED HOME CANNER AND FOOD WRITER AMANDA MILLER.
My first proper date took place on Valentine’s Day the year I was nineteen. We were a dreadful match, but my date figured that the shortest way to a girl’s heart—and the rest of her—was a dinner reservation, so we found ourselves facing off by candlelight in a restaurant two steps above the ordinarily accessible. We were surrounded by swanky couples clanking cutlery as they either gazed into one another’s eyes or else sat quietly, stonily disenchanted. While my date and I fell squarely in the latter category, that evening was nonetheless the first time I considered the possibility of dinner as something other than family time with its recitations of the day’s events. I began to consider supper’s sexier possibilities.
In honor of Valentine’s Day, I set out to write about recipes as Cupid’s darts: how supper and secret ingredients advance courtship and the kitchen is the workshop of romance. Cooking for another person you want to know better is a way of showing off in the in the kitchen. It’s risky, but therein lies the seduction. How you move from pantry to cutting board to stove exposes your private habits and appetites, your temperament and poise, whether you accept disasters with grace or fall apart and begin chucking plates. Recently I burned the stew I was cooking for a gentleman friend when the evening got away from us as we tangled limbs on the sofa. The smell of scorched tomato suddenly distracted us, and in an instant, I had to decide where to focus: bedroom or belly? Better to ruin dinner, or to abandon racier pursuits and rescue a blackened pan? A well-executed Valentine’s meal would make up for the scorched stew.
But what to prepare in the dead of a Toronto winter? Darkness falls early and we want to hibernate and pad our bellies with comfort food. Like Persephone unable to resist a handful of pomegranate seeds, we’re tempted by supermarket berries and woody asparagus from Chile. But actually it’s the perfect time to raid your pantry and crack open the taste of July, since our appetites for sex and love align with those for zesty pickles and sweet preserves.
I reviewed my recipe collection and my well-stocked pantry: brined asparagus spears, peaches in thick vanilla syrup, strawberry-rosewater conserve, salt-packed lemons with cardamom and bay, cherry preserves, lemon-almond curd.
Dinner would be delicious: a tender stewed rabbit, a creamy tart for dessert, the unexpected surprise of cherries I bottled last summer. There was much to do—a trip to the butcher, vegetables to mince, reductions to reduce, sauces to simmer and spaetzle to prepare. I’d made everything at least once before and was confident I had a stellar meal in the bag.
Valentine’s Day Menu
Local cheeses, my own homemade pickled asparagus, ROASTED RED PEPPERS
Walnuts toasted with local wildflower honey and hot chili
Sourdough crackers oven-dried with olive oil, balcony-grown herbs and smoked grey sea salt
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rabbit moutarde with spaetzle
salad greens tossed with SALT-PACKED MEYER LEMONS
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chocolate short-crust tarts with whipped mascarpone, sour yoghurt and cherry preserves, and topped with a slice of my own home-canned peaches in vanilla syrup or PEACHES IN LAVENDER SYRUP
Midway through cooking, though, disaster struck. The spaetzle batter failed. My date gamely agreed to run out in the below-zero night for potatoes as a last-minute replacement, while I tried, and failed, to conceal my dismay. On his return, he found himself locked out, my doorbell broken, no cellphone in his pocket and no small stones to toss at my second-storey window. As he ran laps between my house, the store, a payphone, and my house again, clocking twenty minutes roundtrip, I had time to whisk away the disgraced dish, compose myself, and surrender my expectations of perfection. That he laughed off the whole scene, that he complimented my rabbit and graciously tackled the washing up—I figured these were promising signs.
In his recent book The Bicycle Diaries, David Byrne suggests that the human capacity for denial “helps one focus and to exclude unhelpful news and distracting or diverting information when on the hunt or courting.” I like the idea that the same mechanism is at work whether the human hunter is trying to bag a deer for the table or a mate for the bed. This is not to say that cooking, or dating, must be artful and tricky. But food and drink are blinds to hide behind, and things that are tough to articulate can be buffered by a good meal. And if an evening utterly tanks, you only have to make it till you’ve cleaned your plate, measuring your agony in courses—and skipping dessert.
SALT-PACKED LEMONS WITH CARDAMOM AND BAY
5 or 6 Meyer lemons, plus more for juicing (Since you will be eating the peel, it’s important to choose organic lemons that are unblemished: mildew or soft spots can spoil the batch.)
1 tablespoons coarse sea salt per lemon
3 bay leaves
5 whole green cardamom pods
¼ teaspoon dried red chili flakes, or 1 small fresh red chili
1 Gently scrub the lemons under cool, running water and pat dry.
2 Carefully slice a deep X lengthwise through each lemon, stopping about one inch from the bottom (like quartering each lemon but leaving the pieces joined at the base).
3 Pack about one tablespoon of salt into each lemon, then place the salted fruit into a wide-mouthed mason jar. Press down firmly on each lemon as you add it to the jar, mashing the salt and releasing the juice. Don’t be afraid to get a little rough—you don’t want to tear the quartered lemons apart, but you do want to release as much juice as possible.
4 Tuck the bay leaves, cardamom pods and whole chili down the side of the jar, or if using chili flakes, sprinkle these over the lemons. Seal the jar tightly with a clean lid and gently shake the jar to disperse the spices.
5 Let the jar stand overnight, then press down firmly on the lemons to release more juice. Return the lid to the jar and allow the lemons to stand overnight again. Repeat this process daily until the salt has dissolved and the lemons are completely submerged in juice (about one week). If your lemons don’t produce enough juice, top up the jar with enough squeezed from other lemons.
6 Once the lemons are fully submerged, leave them to stand in a cool, dark spot in your pantry. The salt and spices may settle a bit, and the lemons might swell above the surface—if this happens, just open the lid and press them down firmly. Gradually, the lemons will soften and the juice will turn slightly cloudy and feel slightly viscous.
7 To use, select a lemon from the jar and slice away one of the split quarters. Scrape away the now-mushy flesh and pith using the dull side of a paring knife (the soft bits will be too salty to eat). Cut the peel into thin slices and add to salad dressings, sprinkle over stews, or use to garnish cocktails.
Amanda Miller is a freelance writer and editor who lives and works in Toronto, Ontario. She moonlights as a baker and is working on a book about the intersections between cake and love. You can find her work in the recently released anthology, The Edible City (Coach House Books, 2009), and online at http://cakesandneckties.wordpress.com.
Reader Comments (5)
Thanks so much for this, Amanda-via-Greenvalley! You've reminded me of the joys of preserved lemons--I'm going to put some up immediately, so I can use them while we still have some winter left. I've been trying to find a formula for just enough salt to preserve the lemons, but not so much that the lemons have to be soaked before using. I came up with a heaping tablespoon of kosher salt per lemon, roughly equivalent to your level tablespoon of coarse sea salt. I usually don't include aromatics, to permit for the widest range of applications, but this time I anticipate I'll throw in a few allspice berries...allspice has become my recent best friend on the spice rack (it seems to harmonize with anything, to be at home anywhere).
Now, I have a theory about that viscosity you mention in the juice once the lemons are soft: I think it's pectin! Kevin reminds us that lemons contain a lot of it...what else could it be?
--tom h.
Absolutely right. In fact, the official science-y explanation is, the pectin found in citrus rinds is coaxed out most aggressively by sodium. Hence, the slippery, viscous feel that only begins to appear after a few days in lots of salt.
Thanks for reading!
: )
Thank you for this Amanda. Where do you get meyer lemons in toronto? I love them, but have not found them here. i loved your piece in the edible city!
Actually, meyer lemons are the new in thing, it seems! I've found them at markets on Roncesvalles, and in Kensington and St Lawrence, too.
: )
thanks! meyer lemons here i come!