This is a recipe Ruth taught us at the recent class. As a caterer, she goes through an awful lot of lemons – growing most of them on the land they have at Te Horo. But, to everything there is a season – and that goes for lemons too.
Ruth says, for large events, menus are sorted very early – sometimes months ahead. For a recent event, they calculated they needed a massive amount of lemon zest – at a time when there would be no lemons on their own trees, so they would be forced to buy lemons.
So instead – every time they used a lemon, the chefs were asked to take the zest off and to put it into containers in the freezer. By the time the event came around they had kilos… KILOS… of lemon zest in the freezer. I can’t remember how many kilos Ruth said… around 37 I think…. I can’t even imagine 37 kilos of lemon zest. But I was really impressed at the planning involved in catering an event. I’m so glad I don’t have to do that – imagine the freezer space that would take…
So, that’s one idea for preserving lemon peel.
One of the side dishes we ate at the Christmas class was a salad of Quinoa with a whole lot of yummy additions – cranberries, pistachios, cinnamon… and this pickled lemon peel – finely chopped.
I love to eat Middle-Eastern style food. I have often preserved lemons in salt. You preserve the whole lemon, but only use the peel. This method is quite different, but really good.
Use a vegetable peeler to take the peel off 4 lemons – you don’t want any white pith. Put the peel into a small bowl and add 2 tbsp lemon juice, 1/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup salt, 1 chopped red chilli (take the seeds out), and 3 fresh bay leaves (I used dried chilli and dried bayleaves.
Stir everything up, cover the bowl and put it in the fridge for a couple of hours.
Tip it all into a sieve and rinse it under the cold tap to take off all the salt.
Then tip it into a clean tea towel and dry it completely.
Pack it into a clean jar and cover everything with extra virgin olive oil.
The pickle will keep in the fridge for up to 1 month.
The lemon added a lovely, fresh zing to the quinoa salad. It would be great with couscous (if you can eat that kind of thing), I imagine it would be just as good with rice too. I’m going to cook chicken for dinner tonight and I’ll chop some lemon pickle on top of that.
ninehundredandseventytwelverecipes 
This looks great if you want the flavour quickly, too. I’ll keep it in mind (though I always have lemons around, so I tend to use fresh mostly)!
Pickled lemons are dead easy, and keep for ages. When they age out, I just strip the peels off and freeze them. Probably not good for enzymes, but keeps the flavour going.
Tip: for pickling lemons cut them in quarters but not all the way through at one end, then put them on a freezer bag and suck all the air out and freeze them for 24 hours. THEN do the brining. The peels will be softened so they ripen much faster.
Janet – Oh sooo Yummmm….did I mention I love lemons?? Yummmm, did I say that already??? This sounds exquisite! Love Middle Eastern food too…:)
That sounds delicious. And Middle Eastern cuisine is my all-time favorite.
We used to candy lemon and orange peel. Decadent–everyone but I loved it.
My mum still does! – then she dips it into apricot-scented chocolate… a Christmas treat 🙂
Great tip! Preserved lemons take up a lot of space, so this pickle is awesome! Yumm, I hope you give us the recipe for the quinoa salad too please!
Very nice idea…I use a lot of preserved lemons and this would be a very economic option…not that economy has ever been my strength:)