How to make Moroccan preserved lemons

Preserved lemons make such a difference to a dish, they add a zing, a ping and a lift with a sharp lemon tang. I've bought shop made ones in the past and they just tasted a little flat to me so I wanted to get back into the habit of making my own. I used to make them quite regularly then I messed a batch up and didn't go back to them.

The recipe I used is by Claudia Roden from Arabesque.

Preserved lemons

4 lemons

4 tbsp rock salt

juice of 4 more lemons or to taste

Sterilised jar with lid

Claudia advises that we start off by "washing and scrubbing the lemons", it felt a bit weird washing a lemon so I gave it a good scrub under a warm running tap. Apparently the classic Moroccan way is to cut each lemon into 4 without cutting completely through, you leave it just attached at one end. Then you put a tablespoon of salt in the middle of the lemon, fold it up and pop it into the sterilised jar and press it down so that the lemons are squashed in together. I took the green little heads off the lemons before I cut and salted them as I wasn't planning on eating them.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/30bc23_2332e7bce0a848afb01d5ffe32a562d2/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

One top tip if you want to cut each lemon into 4 leaving them attached at the end is to make sure that the whole lemon will fit into your jar!! This video clip will make you laugh, I decided to give this a go and as you can see the lemon got stuck in the opening of the jar:) I just took them out and split them at the top so they could fit in as halves. By the time I got to the top of the jar I was squashing them in as quarters. I could only fit 3 lemons into my jar so I reduced the amount of salt accordingly.

Once they're all in, give them a press down so they're all squeezed in together and put the lid on. Now leave them for 3-4 days. By this time the lemons will have released some of their juices and softened. Open the jar and press them down as much as you can then add fresh lemon juice to cover them entirely. Close the jar again and them in a cool place for 4 weeks. The longer you leave them the better the flavour develops. When you come to use them scrape off the pulp and just use the lemon rind. My Mum hates to waste the pulp and uses it to add a hit of lemon to soups and stews.

My lemons have got about a week to go so I'm looking through my old recipes to work out what I want to cook with them. I'm definitely going to make a Moro recipe for fried white fish with preserved lemons and green olives. I've eaten it before and it was lovely. I'm also trying to track down an old recipe for a parsley, fresh spinach and preserved lemon salad that I've had before which was very tasty, but currently elusive! I'll share a post on how I end up using them.