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.