Monday, February 4, 2013

When Life Gives You Lemons? Preserve!

Okay Here's what we have so far:

Friday February 1st:
Cereal,
Leftovers
Scallop potatoes with smoked salmon (my own recipe)
and cauliflower roasted with cumin seed, yogurt and pomegranate
from Smitten Kitchen

Saturday:
Cereal
Bread and cheese and fruit
Tuna casserole re-engineered with artichoke tapenade and lemon zest (winged it.)
Broccolini sauteed with garlic

Sunday:
granola and yogurt
more bread and cheese
Egg and smoked salmon sandwiches with apple salad ... ( I was tired... and it was so tasty!)

I think the key to my happiness in the kitchen is to have some ingredients that I just toss in to make it look like I tried harder.
For gourmet homemade condiments I like:

  • candied pecans ( on salads-on top of mashed sweet potatoes-with cocktails..YUM)
  • Lime and cumin pepitas (More salads toppings,  snacks with beer and popcorn, but great mixed with grain salads as well)
  • Reduced orange and rosemary infused balsamic vinegar (drizzled on roasted beets, yummy with beef, instant salad dressing)


I will have all those recipes on here very soon!

Today I made:


I used 5 Meyer lemons from my Mystery Box
 and a lot of kosher salt (almost a 1/2 a cup)


Clean lemons and cut off ends and quarter them.


Layer in the jar:
salt- lemons- salt- lemons. Start and end with salt.
(use Kosher or sea salt to avoid any chemicals added to table salt)


Wait for the lemons to juice up. The salt should draw the juice out.
Eventually you want enough juice to cover the lemons.
After a few hours, add extra juice if you need it.


This is what it looked like while I waited. I added juice to cover later.

Now I'm keeping it in a bag  in the coolest part of my little kitchen
(all the recipes/ forums said keep it in a dark cool place and refrigerate after a couple of weeks)
 and shaking it a couple times a day, tucking down floaters,
 to keep all the salts and acids preserving away


Easier than pie and in a couple of weeks of shaking I will have another luxury condiment that will fancy up soups, stews roasts and marinades,  basically reinvent tuna salad... not to mention be the basis some of your trendy cocktails.

I'll let you know how it turns out. Tonight I think a potato leek or cream of broccoli soup as we have some Acme sourdough bread and three different dinnertimes to contend with.

Chow!

2 comments:

  1. Sitting here with about 30 minutes or so til dinner time, and a big ol' mess of chili bubbling away in the slow cooker. (I once made something in the slower cooker overnight because I don't like leaving it on if I'm out all day, but THAT was a big mistake given that we all had trouble sleeping when all we could smell was deliciousness.) Anyway, lending an ear, moral support, and eager to hear how things go. We eat at home mostly -- started a few years ago with making my own pizza dough to cut back on that weekly take-out item and mushroomed (so to speak) from there. Enjoy~~~

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  2. Not having anyplace nearby that we can go out to, especially now that burritos are off the diet (at least the take-out or eat-out kind, makes eating at home pretty much mandatory here. My favorite solution? Cook BIG pots full so I can have lots of left overs, including some to freeze for later. I'm curious to see what those preserved lemons end up looking like and what you do with them.

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