Punk Rock Garlic

Because everything (even fresh and still dirty from the garden garlic) is cooler when you put "punk rock" in front of it.

Cooking for Bob

Not pictured: 10lbs potatoes, 2kg rice, 1.8kg macaroni (and, fyi, that's a helluva lot of macaroni) and assorted condiments and snacky things (olives, pickles, etc).

Busy prepping this weekend for Bob's big 80th birthday. We made a whole whack of food for the 36 expected guests and then were a bit surprised when only 29 showed up. Lots and lots and lots of food left over.

He's not a vegan, of course -- though his favourite food is rum, which is kind of from a vegetable -- and so we went vegetarian for most things and vegan where we could.

All the pictured vegetables were used in the meal. I made two big crudité platters plus assorted salads using the rest of the veg. I sneaked in the chilies in a sambal that I left on the side -- didn't want to kill the old folks -- and the garlic was roasted and tossed into the pasta salad and the dip for the veggies. All in all it was a success and people seemed pleased.

Htamin Lethoke

The half-devoured bean sambal

Eating with your hands?

The overview pic about 75% of the way through the meal

 Before last week, I knew very very little about the country of Burma -- aka The Republic of the Union of Myanmar -- aside from their most famous export, shaving cream, of course. There are so many of these little foreign places to know about, and really one can't care about them all. After all, there are hockey playoffs this week.

One would expect that after preparing a meal in the traditional style, though, one would know more, especially about the cuisine.

One would be wrong.

I still know very, very little about the cuisine -- or the country -- of Burma. 

Despite my ignorance (and that could be my life's motto, by golly), I pulled off a meal last week that was somewhat tasty, marginally entertaining and whimsically surreal all at once.

Htamin Lethoke is a traditional Burmese dish. It translates out to "rice mixed with fingers" but perhaps a less-alarming translation would be "finger-mixed rice". It's akin to many non-Western meals wherein a starch -- or, in this case, three: rice, noodles and potatoes -- is the main ingredient in a meal and multiple tiny dishes of more expensive or intensely-flavoured dishes are eaten in little bites on the side. Indonesia has its sambals, India its thali. If you've ever had a rijsttafel you're halfway there. Except for the whole "eating with your fingers" bit, that is.

I prepared for four people -- EvO and myself plus two guests -- but as it turned out we only had one guest and so there was a hell load of food left over. I made ten little sambals (which, I realize, is probably NOT what the Burmese call them. Good, fine, I'm wrong; I don't care. Please don't bother to send me emails telling me the correct term. I. Don't. Care.) :

• coconut sambal (the orange-red thing; it's flavoured with chilie powder)
• shaved onion and chilie sambal
• roasted onion and garlic
• bean sprout sambal with red and green chilies
• preserved lemon sambal (using my preserved lemons)
• green bean sambal (pictured above)
• cucumbers in coconut milk
• tofu in black curry
• tamarind sambal
• vinegared chilie sambal

I also had two kinds of noodles -- wide rice noodles, like the kind in Pad Thai but bigger, and bean vermicelli like in salad rolls.

From what I've read and seen on the Internet, the more accurate way to eat it would be have a plate of rice and noodles per person onto which little bits of sambal-thingees would be placed and then mixed. Of course I read this AFTER we ate, so we just improvised. As you can see from the pics, we essentially placed a scoop of rice in the centre of the plate and then put little scoops of the sambal around it.

Eating with the fingers was initially a novelty but it soon became invisible and we all forgot that we were doing something so different for our culture. Near the end of the meal I suddenly realized that I had forgotten the cucumbers in the fridge. I pulled them out and gave everyone a scoop of them to try, and what I found very interesting was that we all just casually dug our fingers into a dish of sliced cucumbers in coconut milk without a second thought.

I thought of putting recipes with this post but I don't think you need them, really; it's more of a process than anything. The rice was special, though, and so here's a recipe for it.

Htamin Lethoke style rice

serves 3-6, I guess... normally we'd eat it all but there was lots left over

• 2 cups long grain white rice (I used Jasmine; you could use basmati)
• 4 cups of water
• 2 red Thai chilies, seeded and crushed in your mortar
• Oil and water, about 2 tbsp each
• Salt, to taste, afterwards

Cook rice in rice cooker. If you don't have one, you really should buy one.

Place the smooshed chilies into a small saute pan and add oil and water. Cook until it's all smooshy soft and add to cooked rice. Let rice sit for a while as you converse with your guest(s) or prepare more dishes.

Flip and fold the rice until the chile/oil mix has coated each grain of rice equally. Turn out onto a plate. Salt before you do this, of course -- and this will teach you to read a recipe to the end before starting it.

Pre-game intelligence

Though this may give away a bit more than I'm comfortable with, I'm posting a few pics from today's marathon cooking session.

 Green bean sambal with chilies and garlic. Yummy.

 Bean sprout sambal with red and green chilies. Weird but good.

Chilie sambal. Yummmm but very hot. I picked up these awesome little red Thai chilies at the grocery store today and the cashier was quite concerned that I was buying so many of them. "Most people only buy two or three at a time," she said. "I've never seen anyone buy 250gr before!" Yeah, well, I only bought so few because I already have habaneros and green chilies in my fridge at home.

So far I have ten dishes ready and three more on the back burner, as it were. Should be enough for four people, I hope. 

A little K & A

My favourite nudity-optional group activity -- aside from throwing rocks at children in playgrounds, of course -- is dining. Dining with friends, done properly and thus well, is a perfectly blended masala of personality, food, music and setting.

The reality, though, is that if a good dinner party is like a masterfully mixed curry, a bad one is like a re-heated TV dinner slathered with ketchup packets left over from breakfast. The minutiae of deciding whom to invite, and what to serve, and which wines to drink, and how many grams of hallucinogens per person, is simply exhausting. Add an unknown to the mix -- will Marc bring his new boyfriend? Is Stephanie still off yellow foods? -- and it's no wonder dinner parties are rare and frequently disappointing.

If logistics makes having an omnivorous dinner party difficult, having a vegan dinner party is even harder.

It's easy enough for the carnivorous. They just buy an obscenely large hunk of dead animal and cook it. Give the flabby-florid-faced-flesh-eaters enough medium-rare dead cow and they'll forgive over-cooked previously-frozen vegetables, uninspired starches and bottled salad dressings.

Vegans tend to be a snivelling and flatulent lot, and they're bitter to boot, so a bit more effort is needed just to break through the sullen shell of self-righteousness that protects most of us from reality. At least feeding vegans or vegetarians allows the host to touch base on tradition and ring the changes across the canonical dishes of our sub-culture.

"Oh, I just love what you've done to this Lima bean and cabbage casserole, Susan. And that braised tempeh is just perfect!"

Yawn.

The few whom I call my friends, though, would be most unimpressed by such lacklustre efforts whether the food was vegan or not.

It's simply stressful when one invites people into one's home and offers them food from one's own hands. My lovely wife will laugh and tell me that "normal" people don't think like this -- what do you mean, people don't care about the depth of their soup bowls? How can they not? -- but for me, cooking for my friends is performance writ small, a tiny theatre of the senses where every technique is judged, every choice critiqued and every bite assessed. It's intimate and yet frighteningly impersonal, like having sex in front of a panel of Olympic judges with those score card things. My lovely wife says this, also, is not how normal people think. She may be right.

I was a cook and a chef for many years. I have fed five course meals to groups of 300 people and 12 course meals to groups of 40. I have fed governor generals, movie stars, mobsters and tax accountants.

But when I'm feeding my friends, I stress. This might be because I have profound yet un-diagnosed mental health issues or -- or! -- it might be because my friends are sophisticated and amazing and generally high maintenance freaks who expect and deserve a culinary experience worthy of my love for them.

In addition, I am unwilling to entertain the idea that any of my friends might actually not care about what I feed them or -- quelle horreur! -- actually prefer a simpler dish. Such people would certainly never have made it past the background checks and interviews.

Case in point: whereas the ideal recipe for obese meat-eating sweaty-armpitted plebeians might include:

• three to five easily bought ingredients,
• five or six minutes of prep time,
• one pot or pan maximum, and,
• no more than 30 minutes of total effort,

dishes for my food-obsessed bons amis shall instead consist of

• many obscure and/or illegal ingredients,
• several days/weeks/months of prep time,
• two or more new cooking utensils and/or single-use gadgets (preferably purchased in situ), and,
• at least -- at least -- a working knowledge of Urdu, Mandarin, Thai or Hmong.

A demanding crowd, one might suggest.

Some of my friends might object to this characterization.

"No, no, not us... we're simple folk with simple tastes," they'll purr, manicured fingers knowingly caressing a fig.

Ha. Liars. One may not choose one's family, only one's friends, it is said. This is simply wrong, an inane aphorism coined by a moron. One's friends are not chosen but are instead an inescapable consequence of one's life. I'm thankful that my life choices have led me to the friends I have, and I treasure my friends, but simple they are not.

I am having two amazing and sophisticated women over for dinner this week -- which will simply add to, but not overshadow in any way the amazing and sophisticated babe-a-licious wife I am blessed with -- and I'm stressing about the menu. I want to serve something that will be absolutely perfect for the occasion and I vacillate between tried-and-true (that I know will be good but also runs the risk of being predictable) and never-before-tried (that might entirely flop BUT could also be a totally perfect orgasmic degustation).

Both are complex meals, of course, and both involve lots of prep work. Since I'm having them over on Friday, and today is Wednesday (okay, actually really early Thursday morning), I had better get on with it.

More afterwards...

Phaux

Well of course one could have called it Faux Pho, but really... too easy.

The lifestyle choice that we have made has downsides, of course, not least of which is enduring disapprobation from fleshy flesh eaters. We are forced to defend or explain our eating habits to persons for whom "balanced diet" means a side of coleslaw and who feel compelled (despite having virtually no understanding of the science behind it) to query our daily consumption of protein. We get the gamut from "Oh, my kids won't eat it," (to which I cheerfully suggest, "Well, put your kids up for adoption then! Or have them put to sleep!") to "I'd miss meat too much."

Strangest, perhaps, is when people try to justify to me why they aren't vegan.

"Oh yeah, like, I tried a vegan diet for like... three hours and man! My stomach was killing me, y'know, and so I, like, had to go back to meat, man. It was brutal, y'know? Yeah, I just don't think it's for me."

When all the arguments are said and done, though, there remains a great gulf between those who will and won't go vegan. Even if it was only one day a week, the health and environmental benefits would be astounding, and the scientific evidence of the benefits of a plant-dense diet is overwhelming. It leads me to the conclusion that those who refuse to go at least part-time vegan are socially irresponsible, morally lax and unworthy of voting privileges, health care and access to clean water. At the very least, they should be spit upon at every possible convenience.

That being ranted, though, there are some things that a vegan diet does not provide. Chief amongst these is excellent pho.

I have been a phan of pho forever. What's not to like, really? A huge bowl of rice noodles, bean sprouts, chilies, lime, cilantro, rare beef, beef tripe, beef balls... ooops. Yeah, that's the problem. In my mind, at least, the experience of pho is the experience of beef. The soup itself is always beef broth, anyway, so having it at a restaurant has never been an option.

But on a cold April evening, with the temperature dipping to a chilly 4 degrees (hey! for Kelowna, that's cold. We had to cancel the outdoor yoga), a steaming bowl of pho was calling to us. And so we (finally...) get to:

Vegan Pho Version 1.0

serves between 2 and 6, depending on level of piggishness. We ate it all with a bowl left over for Erika's lunch the next day, but then we eat massive amounts of food. Just sayin'.

For the soup:

• 6 cups lovingly hand made veggie stock*
• 1 yellow onion, peeled and cut into quarters
• 1 cup dried sliced mushrooms you bought during your Chinese phase
• 12 (yes, a full dozen, don't be a wimp) cloves garlic, whole
• 3-5 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 3" piece of ginger, peeled and grated (or ~3 tbsp ground ginger in a jar)
• 1 tbsp sugar
• good sploosh of rice vinegar
• 1 tbsp peppercorns
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 4 star anise (you have some in the cupboard behind the agar powder)
• a handful or two of cilantro stems

*or, 6c water and stock powder, stock cubes, or packaged stock. Don't suffer for this meal; just use what you have.

For the meal

• diced tofu (extra firm or soft only. You may not use medium tofu for this)*
• bean sprouts, blanched for 10 seconds in boiling water and then shocked
• 1 package 1/4"** rice noodles, soaked in boiling water until soft (about 20 minutes or more; start it when you begin this whole process or your noodles could be crunchy, and it's not like they'll get too mushy)
• diced green onion
• fresh cilantro leaves, shredded
• mini bird's eye chilies, or sambal oelek
• lime wedges (not lime juice from a little plastic bottle)
• fresh basil leaves, if you must

*Yes, you may. I. Don't. Care.
**I initially used the wider 1/2" noodles but really don't like them so I recommend the smaller ones -- about the width of fettuccine. Your call, but don't blame me if you don't follow my directions and thus make an utterly inedible mess of my beautiful recipe.

Method

In Mr. Food Processor, place onions, soy, ginger, sugar, and rice vinegar. Pulse, pulse, pulse. Put into stock pot to which you have, fittingly, added the stock. Add mushrooms, cinnamon sticks, star anise, garlic cloves and cilantro. Using your lovely mortar and pestle, crush the peppercorns into dust and add. You may also use that ridiculously long pepper grinder you received as a wedding gift. I won't tell.

Simmer until nice and, umm, simmered.

Meanwhile, soak rice noodles. Dice tofu, keeping at least some of it out of the clutches of your raw-tofu-mad wife. Prepare everything else in the usual manner by carefully plating it onto your finest Asian supermarket serving ware.

Once your noodles are well soaked and thus limp (ahem), prepare a bowl of pho in this fashion:

• Bring soup to a boil after straining solids.
  
• Boil a kettle of water and cover the drained noodles with it. This will heat up the noodles.
• Place a scoop of beansprouts in the bottom of a nice large bowl, preferably with fish decorated on the side of it
• Cover with a generous scoop of noodles, even if your wife complains that she only wants half that amount. She'll eat it, don't worry.
• Cover with boiling hot stock, just until the noodles are submerged
• Toss a few chilies and cubes of tofu onto the top of the stock
• Sprinkle with green onions, cilantro leaves, optional basil and a lime wedge

Yum.

My, that's a big banana you have there, mister...

And of course these aren't really sweet bananas; these are Musa Balbisiana, or common plantains.

What's the difference betwixt and between bananas and plantains, you ask? Well, if you'd paid attention in that first-year AgSci class, you'd know that both common names are in fact somewhat amorphous terms of convenience -- like when we call the people we work with "friends", for example -- and really refer to two rather broad categories of the same fruit. The relevant differences are that bananas have a higher sugar content than plantains (up to 20% vs 4-6% for plantains) and plantains are never consumed raw.

One cooks plantains as one would cook potatoes, essentially. Thus we may list such methods as steaming, mashing, deep-frying, baking, and poorly. My lovely wife has a specialty that she picked up during her time at the embassy in Santiago.

Erika's Fried Plantains

• 2-3 plantains, depending
• vegetable oil for shallow frying
• salt -- use Diamond Kosher for best results
• patience and a willingness to curse

This last ingredient is perhaps the most relevant... and least common. Plantains are by their nature annoyingly recalcitrant fruits. Unlike their overly-sweet cousins, who too-willingly expose their creamy interiors for anyone with a thrusting finger or rounded blade, a plantain requires firmness of purpose, strong hand strength and a sharp knife.

The best solution is to slice off both ends, score a line down the length, and then firmly -- yet without bruising -- disrobe the treasure inside.

Once you have successfully revealed the interior, you must slice the plantain into rounds. How thick you cut is up to your skill and/or preference, but 1/8th of an inch is a good starting point. Do not measure this. This is cooking, not engineering.

Heat a few seconds worth of oil in a nice thick cast iron pan. If you have poor wrist strength from, for example, all those years of tying political prisoners to wooden chairs with baling wire, you may instead use a crepe pan or something less weighty. When the oil is smiling and loose, add plantain slices. Crowd the pan if you like.

Flip one after a few minutes. If it's crispy brown around the edges, flip the rest. You may instead need to wait -- patience is a virtue, after all -- because under-cooked plantain is like raw potato. Once the other side is done, turn out onto paper towels to drain a few seconds and then season deeply with a great bloody pinch of salt. Eat at once, preferably with an ice cold hoppy beer (like Cannery Brewing IPA), Pisco Sours, or simply ice water.

Oatmeal for Dinner

When we talk about oatmeal -- especially (spoiler!) steel-cut -- we're really talking about grains in general. Thus I'm not going to bother writing "oatmeal (or any grain)" or "grains (oatmeal, in this case)" in this post. I can make this decision because it's my blog. If you don't like it, go elsewhere.

Astoundingly, I've sunk to a new low: I'm actually posting a savoury recipe for grains.

Why, might you ask, is that the shark-jumping of vegan food writing?

Firstly: Every namaste-ing EarthTone with a hybrid and a regrettable tribal tramp stamp has a favourite recipe for something along the lines of a barley risotto, bulgar pilaf or Asian Buckwheat Stir Fry with Seitan Nuggets. Those magazines that glare at one from the fringes of the check-out are full of such recipes, most of which have too little fat, no salt, and far too many alarming inclusions -- such as hemp hearts (wtf?) -- which render them into nothing at all that I would be inclined to eat, let alone feed to my treasured guests.

Secondly, and perhaps most importantly: I say it to be so, and thus it is. If you had been paying attention up to now, you wouldn't need to ask such frivolous questions. Perhaps you should go to another blog.

Of course on paper, grains are a perfectly logical vegan food. They have many pros: they're somewhat tasty (when the subtle taste of the grain hasn't been hidden by hemp hearts, for example), are certainly filling, and are usually inoffensive. They're healthy, economical, low-fat, full of fibre, blah blah blah...

On the other hand, grains have sort of a smug earnestness about them, as if they're the food equivalent of those puffy beige people who go to church, refuse alcohol and think children actually have minds and can feel pain.

And they're just inextricably bound to one of two paradigms: breakfast or side. To have oats for dinner -- and not as a side, but as the main attraction -- is cognitively dissonant, like seeing a pop idol t-shirt on anyone over 14 who isn't (a) homeless, (b) one of those cute tourists from some nation where all the people are miniature or (c) suffering egregious brain damage.

There's an intimidation factor at work, too, because one wonders if one should rinse or not, pre-soak or not, ignore the recipe and stick to the well-chilled Gewurztraminer or not... the list is endless.

Thankfully there are some recipes that break through the chatter and result in a perfectly good dish that is neither too nouveau-vegan (no hemp hearts) nor too aggressively beige. This dish, inspired by a trolling through the NY Times archives, is one such dish. The seasonings are assertive but not overpowering so that the flavour of the oats comes through. The toasted coconut adds to the roasty umami-ness of the dish while the hit of fresh herbs at the end elevates and freshens.

Coconut Oat Pilaf

3 tbsp olive oil
1.5 cups steel cut oats*, rinsed to remove dust, checked over for stones and debris unless you have steel teeth and/or feel lucky
1 tbsp freshly grated ginger
1 tbsp black mustard seed (or yellow if need be, but why not get the right ingredient for a change?)
3 cardamom pods, black preferred, inner seeds only
3 whole dried chilies
0.5 cup unsweetened long shredded (if possible) coconut, dried
0.5-1.0 cups finely chopped mint, cilantro or parsley (if the latter, mix 1/2 & 1/2 with diced shallots)
*Use only steel-cut oats. If you don't have them, but you have another hearty grain, you can probably substitute. Don't blame me, though, if you have to play around with the proportion of water.

Heat oil in a large-ish pot until it glistens like sweat upon a breast. Toss in oats and stir to coat, then add ginger. Cook for a few minutes over medium heat until the oil and roasty oat and ginger is fragrant and alive in your kitchen. Add the spices, which you have prepared in the usual manner (smashed in your heavy stone mortar and pestle that you had to lug through the mall because no one would carry it for you even though you had a wounded finger from a psycho cat who had had enough of a belly rub for one day, thank you very much). Once the mustard seeds start to pop, add about 2.5 cups of water.

Bring this whole mess to a boil and then reduce to a gentle bubble. Cook this for about 10 minutes until holes appear on the surface. Cover, remove from heat and let stand for the next 22 minutes while you prepare a salad, have a second glass of wine or simply indulge in conversation with your beloved. While you are doing this, though, you might want to remember to toast the coconut that you forgot about. Use a heavy skillet (that they all said you didn't really need... such an amorphous word, need), dry, and medium heat. Toast until brown and fragrant. Resist urge to dip vegan marshmallows (which you have previously (a) dipped in melted chocolate, (b)briefly wetted under the tap or (c)rolled in maple syrup) into the coconut, but if you do, make double and divide batch.

Finally, when you are ready to serve, toss in the toasted coconut and fresh herbs. Season profoundly with freshly cracked black pepper and good sea salt. Don't be a wuss about this; grains need salt. Serve warm or cold, as the case may be.

Peanut in a blender

February is the cruellest month, screw Elliot. I've used more sick time this last 27 days than I have in the last five years. I've got the flu, laryngitis, strep throat and malaria all at once. I'm about ready to drop.

And there is simply nothing better for sickness than sesame noodles. We used to eat 'em all the time for lunch in China and they are still my go-to comfort food when I'm feeling a bit under the weather.

The problem with posting that recipe, though, is that I've promised Caitlin for, like, ever, that I'd post her my peanut sauce recipe. Normally I'd just make both and post both, but realistically I'm so sick that it's a challenge to even breathe consistently. So for lunch today I decided to make my fav fab peanut sauce recipe and then make sesame noodles with it instead. It worked out swimmingly and now I feel one step away from Styx.

Better Than Yours Peanut Sauce

1/2 cup unsweetened, unsalted peanut butter
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup soy sauce (or tamari, if you're a wheat whiner)
2 tbsp seasoned rice vinegar
1 tbsp Blair's Original Death Sauce OR 1 tsp Dave's Insanity OR 1/2 tsp Blair's Mega Death Sauce, or 3 tbsp Sriracha (Rooster) Chile Sauce (turn down the garlic, then) OR 2 tbsp Sambal Oelek
1 tsp brown sugar, preferably demerara
about 2 tbsp minced cilantro, chives, parsley or a mix

Combine all ingredients in a food processor and blend the hell out of it.

You will need to add water to thin it down -- I leave the exact amount up to you, but 1/4 cup is a good starting point. I like to drizzle in a bit of sesame oil while the machine is blending, and surprisingly enough you may need to add a soupcon of salt (despite the soy). Don't be a wimp and leave out the sugar, especially if you're using Blair's... the sweetness helps to balance the flavours.

To make sesame noodle sauce: replace tahini for peanut butter and add a bit more hot water.

I serve this over everything and anything; as a dip, as a sauce, as a dressing, as a wound treatment and as a mud bath. It's simply marvellous and, as it says in the title, it's Better Than Yours.

Enjoy.

Latex, mon amour

Preserved Lemons of Doooooom

Animal-based food is straight up 4/4. Flesh, starch, veg and veg, boom-BOOM-boom-BOOM. It's easy to do at a moment's notice, too, after a long day of molesting relatives or mining salt or whatever it is meat eaters do.

Vegan food can be 4/4, too (how many times have you made a traditional kind of meal but just substituted a meat analogue?), but at its best it's a swinging jazzy improv-y 11/8.

The best way to do this is to have a whole whack of things in the fridge so that, when your lovely wife arrives home from a long day of whupping children into shape, you can toss together an interesting and nutritious meal in less time than it takes for an illegal download of the latest episode of True Blood.

To jazz cook, you gotta have the ingredients ready to go. Thus, you gotta plan ahead.

Sadly, I suck at that. But not this time! This time, I've actually planned ahead for a dinner party that I'm not having until the end of next month. Yeah, that's right; I am being pro-active.

PRESERVED LEMONS

10lbs organic lemons, preferably not waxed, washed and dried
1kg pickling salt
1/3 cup peppercorns
knowledge of preserving
a free morning

1. In a sterilized jar (which you've already prepared according to standard preserving procedure), sprinkle about a tsp salt.
2. Slice lemons into almost quarters -- leaving about 1/16" at the stem end still attached -- if you have small lemons. Slice into quarters if large.
3. Put salt onto exposed lemon flesh.
4. Shove into jar.
5. Repeat, shoving lemons in as hard as you possibly can, until jars are full to bursting. You will notice that the action of shoving the lemons into the jars has resulted in the juice being squeezed into the jar. This is good. Congratulate yourself.
6. As you smash in lemons, add a few peppercorn to the jar, too. [If you didn't get to this step until you finished putting all the lemons into jars, and so now have a recriminatory pile of peppercorns staring at you, well, then, tough bananas. That will certainly teach you to read a recipe through -- especially if it's one of my recipes -- before you attempt it.]
7. If necessary, top up jars with cooled boiled water, but you should be fine. Tighten lid, shake like mad, and then have a cup of tea. You're going to be shaking the jars every day for about a week, so don't attempt this right before that cruise to Alaska that your wife has been bugging your about forever. During this week the salt will dissolve, leaving you (ideally) with glisteningly yellow lemon segments in a lovely clear liquor.
   
8. After about a month, the preserved lemons will be ready to eat. This means that you cannot make these and then eat them tomorrow and then post about how this recipe sucks and I have no idea what I'm talking about. YOU HAVE TO WAIT FOR THEM. Remember that whole Kimchi fiasco? Patience, grasshopper.
   

To serve, open the jar and wait a few seconds. You should get an intense citrusy smell from the lemons. If you smell ammonia, discard the whole jar as contaminated. If you smell sulphur, you've probably died and gone to "didn't read the instructions fully before starting the recipe" hell.

To eat, rinse a quarter of lemon, remove the flesh and discard, and then chop the rind into small slices. Poach briefly (~15 seconds) if using fresh in a salad or sandwich (or hummus), or just add it to dishes that will cook. You can also follow whichever recipe you may have.

Preserved Lemons are just one of those things that you probably should have in your fridge at all times.

The process is the thing, though, and that's where the latex fixation really comes in handy. See, even though I'm a big tough guy, my winter-time hands are prone to cracking and splitting. To make preserved lemons -- which are essentially lemons and salt -- you really, really really need to wear latex gloves. Otherwise the lemon juice from said lemons gets into the cracks and really, really really hurts. Then the salt gets in there, too, and just adds its own special form of pain.