The "Making Do" Challenge -- Pickled Lemons (a revisit)

About four years ago, my neighbor gave me his Meyer lemons, and my daughter and I pickled them and wrote about it here:  Pickled Lemons.

They were fine but did not inspire me to want to keep making them.  My neighbor's tree has since died (whaaaaaa!) but my friend DL gave me lemons from his wife, GL's tree.  I wanted to try pickling lemons again but this time using a recipe from Charles Perry's translation of Scents and Flavors, a 14th century Syrian cookbook.

ISBN 978-1-4798-5628-2

I wrote about this book previously, as its recipes were featured at a culinary symposium, put on by the Society for Creative Anachronism.  You can read about it here:  West Coast Culinary Symposium 2018.

This book is fun to read.  The Arabic writings are on the left side of the page and his translation is on the right.  The recipes are intriguing and look tasty.  The spices referenced are wide and varied, including the usual cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, ginger, pepper, and other familiar ones.  But there are also others like spikenard, betel nut, and rose hips. Few recipes look complicated but many use techniques or food combinations I am not used to but look good and doable.

In all honesty, this looks like a cookbook I could spend a lot of time exploring and still offer up tasty meals.

I looked in Chapter 8:  How to Make the Various Types of Sour and Salty Pickles.  The book offers several variations on salted lemons, and I chose the first variation, recipe number 8.20.

Salted Lemons -- First variation

Take salted lemons, cut up small, put in a vessel, and squeeze the juice of fresh lemons to cover.  You can also use sour orange juice, which is milder than lemon juice.  Add oil, mixed spices, pounded toasted coriander seeds, minced parsley, mint, and rue, and set aside.  It is one of the very best and most fragrant of condiments.

These are the ingredients for the pickling liquid. 

My Notes

The night before making the recipe I sliced the cleaned lemons, spread them in a pan, and sprinkled kosher salt over them.  The pan was left slightly tilted so the liquid would gather at the bottom.  The next morning the slices were softer and the salt had been absorbed.

the night before

the morning after

My goal was to make one quart jar full of pickled lemons.

The two lemons missing their peels were juiced for the pickling liquid.  (Their peels were dried and powdered -- well worth it as a flavoring ingredients themselves.  They are really good in bread with olives and sun-dried tomatoes.)

I used a premixed "Poudre fines", consisting of cinnamon, cloves, ginger, grains of paradise, pepper, and saffron.

1/4 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon coriander
1 teaspoon Poudre fines
1/4 cup mixture of coarsely chopped rue, mint, and parsley

These ingredients were mixed well together in a bowl.

First I put in some of the spice and herb mix. Then several lemon slices.  Then more mix.  I repeated this until the jar was full.

The lemon juice went in to cover, although there was some floating of the lemon slices.  (Two lemons' worth of juice was not enough and I had to add some lemon juice from a bottle.)  After that I poured about a one inch layer of oil over the top.

Not quite full but close enough.

The whole container went into the refrigerator for about a week before I tasted it.

The Verdict

We tried them out of the jar, without putting them with a meal.

The flavor was, well, luscious.  Sour (but not too much for me), barely salty, but the spices and especially the herb flavors came through.  I loved it and so did my guest taster.  I ate several and wanted more.  I think that I liked the mint the best but the whole blend was superb.

The peel is not bitter from the white and the yellow zest is softer in flavor and texture than fresh lemon peel.

We have since had them with a meal, roasted chicken next to a vegetable stew.  It is a great condiment, adding some zing and intrigue to the meal.  We also made sandwiches with cheese and meat and slices of pickled lemon -- it was amazing!

One guest taster, who loves lemons but does not like parsley or cinnamon, did not like the mixture at all.  I could not get parsley as a dominant flavor, but she did.

I have since refilled the jar with more salted lemon slices, using the same juice, herb, and spice mixture.  This one is a keeper.

Success!