I’m sure, like me, you have a container of cured lemons in your refrigerator you’re wondering what to do with [1].
Actually, Paul got me Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc at Home cookbook for Christmas. In there were a couple of recipes for cured and preserved lemons. That’s something I’ve always wanted to do, so a few weeks back I made a batch of cured lemons.
3 lemons
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup kosher salt
Scrub the lemons and then slice them about an 1/8 of an inch thick, pick out any seeds.
Mix the sugar and salt together
Put a layer of the sugar/salt mix in a container
Put a layer of lemon slices in the container
Cover with a layer of the sugar/salt mixture
Repeat until it’s all gone, ending with sugar and salt on top
Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 weeks
Tonight I made a garlic cured lemon aoili to use as a sauce on sautéed fish.
About 4 cured lemon slices
1 clove garlic
1 cup mayo
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp water
Dash of sriracha or Tabasco or cayenne pepper.
Discard the lemon pulp and dice the peel finely
Dice the garlic clove
Put everything in a food processor and give it a good buzz.
We sautéed a piece of red snapper (any white fish would work fine) with salt and pepper and then spooned the aoili over it.
There was no need to salt the fish, the aoili was plenty salty. The aoili was wonderful, it was lemony and salty and sweet. If anything the curing intensified the lemon flavor.
Life has given me lemons, and it is good!
1. What? You don’t have a container of cured lemons in your refrigerator? Why not? Why are you wasting your time reading this? Go get those lemons preserved!
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