Category Archives: Recipe

Aug 11 2012
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Recipe, Salt Preserves

Preserved Meyer Lemons (also works for limes)

Sometimes, in our eagerness to ‘can ALL the things’, we come across recipes that just sound cool, and the pictures are bright and enticing, and although we have no feasible use for the end product, we become fixated not on the practicality, but the pretty. Such was the case with me and preserved lemons. I had to have them, needed them desperately, but in reality had never cooked with them before.

I’m happy to report that I honestly now can’t fathom NOT having at least one jar at my disposal. Like Frank’s Red Hot, I put this shit on anything. If you cook Moroccan, you need this, if you cook any style of Indian, you need this. Seafood? Need it. Stir fry? Need it. Roast veggies? I’m sure you get my point.

The most wonderful thing about it is how bloody easy it is. I am actually fairly confident that chimps, given lemon wedges, salt, and some canning jars, could do this. Salt preserves require no special equipment, and can be prepped in less time than it takes me to brush my teeth.

Here’s what you’ll need:

  • canning jars – I like 250mL for this, especially the short fat ones. Since these are used somewhat sparingly, there’s no need to create 1L vats of lemon.
  • kosher salt
  • 8-10 Meyer lemons – why Meyer? They have a natural sweetness that seriously helps provide a massive burst of lemony flavor in your finished preserves
  • extra lemon juice – fresh squeeze some if you like, or cheat and buy a bottle

Okay, ready for this? It’s super complicated. Sterilize your jars in boiling water as per usual, and thoroughly wash your lemons. I usually cut the knobby ends of the lemons off, but don’t if you’re feeling exceptionally lazy or don’t care about lemon aesthetics. Cut your lemons into eighths. Liberally sprinkle your lemon wedges with salt. You’re halfway done.

Put a layer of salt, enough to cover the bottom, into your sterilized jars. Add a layer of lemons and press them down until they’re mostly juiced. Add another layer of salt. Add another layer of lemon, squish. Repeat until you’ve got lemons packed to within a half inch of the top of your jar. Add one final layer of salt and then add in the extra lemon juice as a gap filler, up to within a quarter inch of the jar rim. Put the lid on tightly and put the jars somewhere out of the way for a weekl at room temp, occasionally inverting them. Then just pop them in the fridge for a couple of weeks and you’re good to go.  The pictures below are with limes.  Don’t get confused because things are green instead of yellow.

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What To Do With It

This recipe, if left to its own devices, can be like that time in grade school where for arts and crafts they made you make a clay ashtray for your parents, even though neither of them smoked. You were damn proud of your turtle/seashell creation, and your parents murmured approvingly, but it was shuffled awkwardly from bookshelf to bookshelf for a couple months before finding its way into the memento box. Don’t let that happen with your lemons!

First off, these things are potent. We’re talking using one or two wedges per dish. They are intensely lemony and a little salty and if used in too high a dosage, you’ll feel you’re eating a Mr. Clean flavored salt lick. To use them, remove them from their jar and wash them thoroughly. I can’t stress that enough. There will be residual salty flavor even after you do that, and the one time I forgot to rinse, it made the food almost inedibly salty. Rinse, rinse, rinse. I generally discard the inner membrane-y bit. Unlike most lemon items, what you’re really after here is the peel, which should be soft and pliable. For most cooking applications you’re going to want to cut the peel into very small pieces, finely chopped approaching minced. These lemons, or limes if you go that route, will quickly become indispensable in your culinary arsenal. Add as a sort of seasoning…play around, be adventurous (I’m going to try them in some sort of ice cream application). And please tell me if you come up with a crazy combo that works, so I can try it too.

My Suggestions:

  • Fish — either in the oven en papillote or wrapped in foil on the BBQ. Place your filet (salmon or trout are my faves so far) on your foil and drizzle with olive oil. Throw in a small spoonful of capers, and 2 wedges worth of finely chopped lemon, wrap it up and cook over medium heat until the fish flakes when you poke it with a fork. It will smell and taste of angels.
  • Stir fry — beef, chicken, pork, or shrimp, preserved lemon don’t care. Prep your favorite combo as usual, toss in one or two wedges worth with the veggies and you’re golden. Also extremely effective at flavouring rice dishes of all varieties.
  • Roasted root veggies — hack up your favorite combo of tatties, beets, parsnips, whatever, throw them in a pan with olive oil, pepper, and a couple wedges worth of lemon. Oven roast or BBQ with delicious results.

Are they sweet? Salty? Savoury? Acidic? It’s like my tastebuds don’t understand what’s going on, all they know is that they love it and they want more. I recently did a batch of limes and I don’t even have a word for how fucking heavenly these little green creatures are. My next excursion will be using them in alcoholic beverages…just think of the grand dame of Canadian hangover cures: the Caesar, with a thin slice of perversely tasty lime preserve. It might be enough to get me over my aversion to Clamato.

Weird to think of these as a staple food item but I really have grown quite attached to having them around. Hopefully my enthusiasm is contagious.

Based on this Pin:

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Jul 28 2012
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Canning, Condiments, Recipe

Hhhhh-hi Hhhhh-honey Mustard

A lot of times I wonder if I don’t love food simply because it’s a vehicle to ingest delicious, delicious condiments, particularly condiments of the vinegary variety.  If you were to open my fridge right this very second, and calculate the ratio of sauces:actual food items, your number would be very large.  Mustard is one of my all time favourites.  Everything from the nuclear yellow French’s prepared mustard (which I’m tempted to each with a spoon), to grainy artisan fancy pants moutard.

I found a recipe for roasted garlic-lemon-honey mustard and I thought “now there’s a first date food just waiting to be prepared”, so off I went.  Here’s a concise little PDF of the recipe to help you on your way, or if you refuse to read my meandering commentary:

Cackle Fruit — Hhhhh-hi Hhhhh-honey Mustard (PDF).

Here’s what you’ll need:

Roasted Garlic & Lemon Mustard

INGREDIENTS

  • 3/4 cup dry white wine
  • 3/4 cup mustard seeds
  • 2 – 3 bulbs of garlic
  • olive oil
  • 1 and 1/4 cup white wine vinegar
  • 2 large lemons for both zest (zest first!) and juice  (2/3 cup)
  • 1/4 cup local honey
  • 1/2 tsp Kosher salt
  • garlic powder and dry mustard powder, for adjustments (optional)

Apologies for the “grainy” pictures, it’s not my attempt at a terrible food pun, it’s the last dying gasps of my faithful iPhone.  I promise it’ll get better!  There are basically two main parts to this recipe, which take a bit of time.  The first is soaking your mustard seeds, the second is roasting your garlic.

Seemingly Random Tip #1: Do NOT make this recipe within 24 hours of expecting company at your house.  Roasting 2-3 full hunks of garlic, mashing it, and blending it makes delicious mustard, but a very garlicky kitchen.

Wine is almost completely absorbed.

Soaking the mustard seeds can take anywhere from 2 hours to overnight, so if you’re a planner (I’m certainly not) and can predict when you’re going to have the sudden urge to do some canning, combine 1 1/4 cup of dry white wine with 3/4 cups of mustard seeds the day before.  I only had yellow mustard seeds, but for a really neat looking grainy mustard, you can blend yellow and brown.  Like magic, the mustard seeds will slowly absorb the wine.  Let it sit until most of the wine has been soaked up.  I’ve found that it’s usually very close by the time you prep, roast, and cool your garlic and get your lids and jars sterilized.

Garlic, pre-roasting.

Garlic, post-roasting.

Start in on the garlic by chopping the pointy top off to expose the individual cloves, and then peel as many layers of the skin off the sides as you can without risking structural integrity.  Pop the de-nuded bulbs in an oven-safe dish, drizzle them with just enough olive oil to coat them, and put them in a pre-heated 350F oven.  I like a lot of garlic, so I did 3 whole bulbs rather than 2, but you can adjust according to your own taste.  Roast it for 45 minutes, have a peek.  If it’s gone deliciously dark brown and smells incredibly sexy, it’s good to go.  If not, keep roasting in 15 minute increments until it looks like the post-roasting picture above.  Take it out of the oven and let it cool on the counter for a while before trying to handle it.

The smell really is incredible.

Garlic + Vinegar

Once it’s cooled enough for you to pick it up, remove each of the cloves and put them in a food processor/blender.  I’ve tried the “squeeze them out like they’re toothpaste” method with decent success, but really the easiest, least messy way to get them out is with a fork.   Add in 1/2 cup of vinegar and blend the garlic into a smooth paste that smells like heaven.  Add in the wine-soaked mustard seeds, 2/3 cup of lemon juice (use fresh lemons and zest them first so that you can use the zest later), 3/4 cup of vinegar and blend to your desired level of graininess.  It’s all about consistency here folks, and it’s an individual thing, so make your mustard the way you want it.  I love whole grain, so I didn’t mangle the poor seeds until they were unrecognizable, but just enough to bust them up a bit.

Pour your almost-mustard into a saucepan, add in the honey and salt, and simmer over medium heat, stirring constantly until it starts to thicken up into something resembling the consistency of French’s mustard. Stir in the zest from those fresh lemons you juiced earlier and cook for another minute or so. Taste it.  If it’s not mustardy enough, you can use some dry mustard powder to spruce it up a bit.  If for some bizarre reason it’s not garlicky enough, you can cheat with a bit of garlic powder.  Not sweet enough? More honey.  I won’t tell.

Grainy goodness.

Once it tastes the way you want, fill your sterilized jars, wipe and lid them, and process them in your boiling water canner for 15 minutes.  Remember to take them out at the end without tipping them, and upon cooling you should hear a ‘POP’ as the seal is formed.  If your lid doesn’t have an indent in the middle, it didn’t seal properly, so you’ll have to reprocess that particular jar.  I followed the recipe, used 3 full garlic bulbs and ended up with 6 x 125 jars of awesome.

Original recipe from Pinterest.