Recipes
p. 058
Salted lemons, three ways
One jar on the shelf, three dinners on the table. Kwame Asante’s preserved lemons, and what to do with them all winter.
Every autumn, when the first winter lemons arrive from the Algarve, I fill one big jar. By February it has become the most useful thing in my kitchen: the soft, salty peel goes into stews, dressings, butter and rice, and a spoonful of the brine wakes up almost anything.
The method is old and forgiving. You need good unwaxed lemons, coarse salt and patience. The only real rule is that the fruit must stay under the juice.
Three ways to use them
Chop the peel finely and stir it through warm chickpeas with olive oil and parsley. Mash it into soft butter with black pepper to melt over grilled fish. Or slice it thinly over a tray of chicken thighs and potatoes before they go into the oven.
The recipe
Salted lemons, three ways
Makes one 1-litre jar
20 min, then 4 weeks
Ingredients
8 unwaxed lemons 150g coarse sea salt 2 bay leaves 1 tsp black peppercorns 1 small dried chilli Juice of 3 more lemons
Method
Scrub the lemons and cut each into quarters, leaving them joined at the base. Pack salt into the cuts, then press the lemons hard into a sterilised jar. Add the bay, pepper and chilli, then pour over the extra juice until the lemons are covered. Seal, shake once a day for a week, then leave somewhere cool for four weeks.
“Make them in September and you will thank yourself in February.”
About the writer
Kwame Asante
Kwame runs a twelve-seat supper club in Peckham and writes Octavo’s At the Table recipes. He cooks West African food through a Portuguese pantry.
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