Preserve Plan of the Week: 'Preserved Lemons.'

For this preserve I used an on-line recipe on the bbc good food website:

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1977656/preserved-lemons

My mature lemon tree.

This is a bit of an unusual preserve for me to do yet I have a lemon tree which has started to have fruits after so many years of growing up to maturity. The lemons take up to a year to be a rippen yellow on the tree. If last year I had only one lemon, the very first one from this baby, this year he gave me eight and the tree is still in flowers. So I put myself on the quest of doing justice to the fruits of that little tree which followed me from flat to flat, home to home for the past twenty years or near enough. 



His bounty will be ready with a bright sunshine yellow in a few months, so I set to learn in anticipation what to do with a regular lemon harvest. My mind is buzzing already with a few numbers I could do like lemon curd. 

Preserved lemons was the first step: how to preserve a lemon, simply and purely. So I used my Home bible: Google and just googled it. I chose the bbc goodfood link because buying their magazine since a very long while, I find their recipes down to earth and reliable. Their one was just fairly easy to follow.

The prep ingredients.

First gather all the ingredients, and that is when a weekly plan gets handy because you will be already prepared and fully stocked:

-The ten lemons.

Lemons aplenty. 

-The sea salt.

A good rock sea salt.

-The spices, star anise, cinnamon sticks and coriander seeds.

The Spices.

The juicing is the hardest bit of it all, which means the recipe is easy peasy. Just use a strainer to keep the pips and pulp away from the juice.

Juicing.

the lemon circle of life. Home made still life.

In my home any pips, kernels and seeds tend to be kept and given a chance to become something, a plant, a tree, and when we have too many we give the young sprouting lives to friends who will cherish what they never tried to grow from chillies to lemons passing by Cucamelons and Goji berries. It is a simple gift which keeps on giving ten fold whenever you care. Given time and TLC, just a pip starts another big circle of hope and beauty.

After quartering the four lemons, it is just a matter of assembling them in the jar with the salt, spices, and lemon juice. It is a no brainer. 






Yet as for those lemon babies can be kept for six months, I have plenty of bespoke stews, and tagines in perspective already mapping themselves in my head. 





Preserved Lemons recipe: standing ovation. 
This post will be updated with pictures and mentions of all the dishes where the preserved lemons are used.