Easy Flavor Booster: Moroccan Style Preserved Lemons

I have probably spent close to the price of a nice pair of Jimmy Choo's on jars of preserved lemons over the last 10 years. It's one of those things that are so easy to make at home, but the jars are so exotic, and the lemons such flavorful additions to all sorts of dishes that I really just had to share my recipe with you. Generations of good cooks in Morocco  make these regularly, and there are as many methods and recipes as there are cooks there. This one is very basic, you can search the web for countless more. My friend Amy took one look at the jar on my counter and told me "I need that recipe!".

When I have preserved lemons ready to use, I'll likely sneak them into anything I can: chicken or fish dishes, vegetable salads, marinated olives, they add a über lemony salty tang that is the absolute ultimate flavor booster. The major ingredients are lemons and kosher salt. The only other real ingredient is time, since it takes about a month for these to be ready to use. They'll keep a long time in the fridge after they ferment for a month, though. I like to add a few cloves and some broken cinnamon sticks. On occasion I add whole dried chili peppers, but since I have none left from last years garden, there are none in my current batch.

Please use organic lemons if you can, since you are eating the skin of preserved lemons. And kosher salt since it has no additives. I use the pulp and the skin generally of the preserved lemon, and just remove the seeds in things I will cook, but more often in salads and dressings, just the rind. Because they are really salty, always rinse them before using and scrape out the seeds, then mince or sliver finely. 

If you are at all into the fermenting scene, like me, you already know the basics of prepping your tools and jars, making sure everything is clean, clean, clean. I used a quart canning jar for this, sterilized in boiling water. Depending on the size of your lemons, you may need more or fewer lemons, or you may need just the juice of the last one or two to finish filling your jar. Consider keeping the largest lemon you have as the last one; you can use it to wedge into the mouth of the jar, under the shoulder to hold the rest in place. I write the date and contents right on the lid so I'll know when my lemony masterpiece is ready to eat.

Moroccan Style Preserved Lemons fermenting on my kitchen counter.

Moroccan Style Preserved Lemons

For a 1-quart standard canning jar

8-9 lemons, scrubbed
kosher salt
1-2 cinnamon sticks, broken
4-6 whole cloves.
1-2 whole dried hot chile peppers, opt.


 Pour a cup or so of kosher salt into a bowl. Put about a tablespoon of salt into the bottom of your jar and a clove and a bit of cinnamon stick. If your lemons have "knobs", trim them off so your lemons are perfect ovals or rounds. Stand a lemon up lengthwise, and slice it almost in half stopping about a half-inch up from the cutting board. Turn the lemon 90º, and do the same, making a cross cut, nearly but not quite cutting through so you have almost quartered it lengthwise. If you look down on a cut lemon it'll look like a 4-petaled blossom.

Pack a heaping tablespoon or so of kosher salt into the cut lemon and drop it into the clean jar. Do another, and then press down on the lemons with the handle of a wooden spoon to squeeze out as much juice as you can, drop in more spices, and a dried pepper if using. 

Continue layering salt filled lemons and spices, and pressing until the jar is full to the top, wedging in the last lemon. This should be your biggest lemon. Wedging in the last one helps keep them all in place under the salty juice.  Add another tablespoon of salt over the top and if the last lemon isn't covered with juice, squeeze out juice from your extra lemons so there is juice covering the lemons completely. Cap the jar with the sterilized lid, and leave at room temperature for a month, then refrigerate. Your  preserved lemons are ready to enjoy.

Fie, Fie, Foe, Friday: Fermented & Demented Hot Sauce

Fermented & Demented Hot Sauce

Somewhere, just before the turn of the last century, I got bit by the pickling bug. Not just the vinegar kind. Fermented pickles. Kimchi. And sauerkraut. It started with a nice lady named Min. She and I worked at a Whole Foods at the same time, and we'd share things from our home-packed lunches. She had never eaten eggplant Caponata that my Italian family has always made from our homegrown eggplants and garlic, and I had never eaten homemade Kimchi. A revelation for us both, but bigger for me. After I had kimchi more or less figured out, I went on to growing and pickling short, fat cucumbers in a crock with dill and garlic, the way our neighbor Mrs. Shultz did when I was a kid. Then sauerkraut. I made quite a bit for a while, and then stopped for a few years as there were too few of us kraut-eaters in the family. More kimchi and Moroccan preserved lemons. Then a real hiatus.

I started again a few years back, making some naturally fermented foods to slip into my son-in-laws lunches while he was fighting cancer. Because the pickles and the sauerkraut are delicious, and also because fermented foods are considered to have some health benefits. I wish he was still alive to taste this latest batch of hot sauce. He'd have loved it. He'd have been crying while he ate it, because it's arse-kicking hot, but he'd have loved it. I grew both these killer-hot jalapeños this summer, and the garlic I used here. This stuff is crazy good. Demented.

The big thing for me is flavor. Fermented pickles have an entirely different flavor profile that I adore, and I wanted my hot sauce to have something going on in the background besides just vinegar and heat.

In the old days, I don't think people were as precise as we are now when they were pickling, or doing any sort of food preserving. They learned what worked and stuck to it. There is an absolute TON of information on how to ferment hot peppers (and lactic fermentation of many foods) on the web, and you can use any one of those methods. What follows is very basic, so do a search if you have questions, or post them in the comments below.

Mine is pretty simple: you'll need a jar to hold your peppers to the top, with a fairly narrow opening.  A quart  is a good size. A canning jar. The jar should have "shoulders". You'll need enough hot peppers to fill the jar tightly,  1 big bell pepper, a handful of peeled garlic cloves, a scale, some non-iodized salt (use kosher) and water that has no chlorine in it. If your tap water has chlorine in it, let it stand in a bowl for a few hours so the chlorine can dissipate, or use filtered water.

Weigh 50g of salt and mix it thoroughly into 1 liter of water. This is your 50% brine. Wash the peppers, and trim off the stems, and most of the green top. DO NOT touch your face while handling peppers or wear gloves. Pack the peppers into the jar, adding a few garlic cloves here and there. Pour in the brine to near the top, then cut a piece of the bell pepper bigger than the jar opening, and fit it into the jar so it holds all the peppers and garlic below the liquid. I had a couple of absolutely huge jalapeños, so I just criss-crossed them at the top near the opening to hold the peppers down.  Top it up with brine so the brine comes top of the jar rim. Cover it with a clean cloth,  set it aside, and check it every day, skimming off any mold that forms. This strong brine can take 10 days to two weeks to get good and sour. It'll smell a bit like sauerkraut as it ferments. If you ever think anything is going really wrong. throw it out, and consider it a cheap learning experience.

Once your peppers are pickled, Pete, place a strainer over a bowl and pour the hot peppers and garlic into the strainer. Keep the brine, you'll need it.  Clean out your blender and turn on your kitchen exhaust fan. Now you can make:

Fermented & Demented Hot Sauce

Ingredients:

1 quart of fermented  peppers and garlic, drained and brine set aside
1/2 cup cider vinegar
6 whole cloves
6 whole allspice berries
1 tsp. fennel seed, bruised
2T raw honey

Instructions:

1. In a small non-reactive saucepan, combine  the cider vinegar, the cloves, allspice and fennel, bring it to a quick boil, shut it off, cover the pot and let it steep, off the heat, for a half hour.

2. Strain out the solids and pour the vinegar into the blender jar. Add the honey and the peppers. Puree, adding the saved brine as needed to make a sauce consistency. Do NOT put your face anywhere near the top of the jar, and open it cautiously. The fumes from the peppers can make you cough and choke.

3. Place in a quart jar, in the fridge and let mellow for a day or so before using. Makes about 3 cups. If you save  the remaining brine in a covered jar in the the fridge, you can use it to "spike" another spicy fermentation project.