Preserved lemons are traditionally used in North African cuisine, but are a useful ingredient to have in the fridge and can add a citrus kick to many other recipes. They are very easy to make, see here for a blog post about making preserved lemons.

Try out some of the following ideas:

Use as a marinade for chicken or fish. Add 1 teaspoon of finely chopped lemon to 1/4 cup olive oil, 1/2 garlic clove and 1/4 teaspoon balsamic vinegar.
Puree or combine in a mortar and pestle.

Add a tablespoon of finely chopped lemon to potato salad.

Use with parsley, tomato and bulgher wheat in a Tabouli.

Add to a stuffing mix with parsley and thyme.

Stir chopped lemons into yoghurt with chopped mint for a barbecue dressing.

Mix diced lemons with tomatoes and fresh coriander for a  salsa to serve with fish steaks.

Use the salty liquid in a Bloody Mary.

Mix thin strips of sliced lemon in with dishes of olives.

Puree a whole lemon and use with olive oil as the base for a salad dressing.

Use the lemon juice when making hummus and add some chopped lemon as a garnish.

Marinate chicken breasts  in a pureed mix of preserved lemon, harissa and olive oil before barbecuing or grilling.

Use the pureed pulp to add flavour to stews.

Add thin strips of lemon to stir fried vegetables.

Mix in slices of lemon when cooking couscous.

Finely dice the lemon and add to pasta dishes or risotto.

Preserved lemons are a common ingredient in North African, and  especially Moroccan, cuisine. You can actually use them in many dishes - anywhere that would benefit from a bit of citrus flavour.  I've put together some ideas in this blog post about what to do with preserved lemons.

They're very easy to make and it costs very little to make a large jar full, especially in January and February when the new crop of imported lemons enters the UK. 

See here for the preserved lemons recipe.

Recipe Costs

£2 8 lemons (unwaxed)
£1.87 10 tbsp sea salt
£3.87 Total

about £3 per kg of preserved lemons (less than a tenth of the cost of buying them from Rick Stein's website)

After giving the lemons a good scrub in hot water the stalk ends are removed with a sharp knife.

Carefully chop the lemon into quarters taking care not to slice right through (it doesn't matter if you do, they just won't look as pretty)

Squeeze as much of the juice out as possible, this can be made a bit easier by popping the lemons in the microwave for 10 seconds beforehand. I find using my thumb to push done each quarter was the most efficient way.

My eight lemons produced about 500ml of lemon juice, which was just enough to cover them later.

Rub about a tablespoon of course sea salt into each lemon, make sure it gets well into each quarter. Pack the fruit into a steralised jar as you go, squashing each one down as you push it in, this helps to release more juice.

My 8 lemons filled about 2 litres of preserving jar. Spices can be added at this stage, try a cinnamon stick, peppercorns, coriander seeds, a chilli or a bay leaf.

When the jars are packed full, top them up with the lemon juice, making sure there ar no air gaps. If you don't have enough juice then use some bottled lemon juice or little bit of water.
The jars need to be kept for at least a month to allow the salt to draw out the lemon juice. Once opened it's best to keep the jar in the fridge.

Recipe Timings

45 mins preparation

Taste Test

This will have to wait a few weeks.

The recipe I used was adapted from the one at the thefoody.com, as recommended on the grow your own forums.

See here for the rhubarb chutney recipe in more detail.

Recipe Costs

£9.34 1.5kg rhubarb (equivalent cost, mine was free)
£2.06 1500g dark brown soft sugar
£1.15 900ml vinegar (malt)
£0.55 425g sultanas
£0.36 75g chopped dried apricots
£0.40 40g root ginger
£ 0.01 30g salt
£0.30 30g garlic
£0.10 1 chilli
£0.01 2 tsp peppercorns
£0.90 3 lemons, peel only
£15.18 Total (£5.84 without buying the rhubarb)
£5.06 per kg of jam (£1.94 without buying the rhubarb - 30% of the cost of equivalent at ocado)

I made half as much again as the original recipe, mainly because I enthusiastically picked too much rhubarb. I find adapting a recipe like this isn't a problem with chutney, I'd be a bit careful doing the same with jam as it can be tricky to get large quantities up to temperature quick enough. The rhubarb was chopped into quite fine slices, about 1cm, as I didn't want the end result to be too stringy. Not a problem when you have a nice sharp knife.
Substituting some of the sultanas for apricots was inspired by seeing several recipes containing apricots or dates, I imagine they complement the rhubarb well and add more variety than the standard sultanas. We've been mixing our own muesli lately so have a good stock of dried fruit in the cupboard.

A nice large amount of garlic went in to the pot, it was getting on for two heads, leaving us with only one head of homegrown left. The lemon peel was taken off some lemons from the freezer, I'd picked these up in the out-of-date section at the supermarket a few weeks ago. Not having any cayenne pepper I chucked in a finely chopped chilli, I'm sure given the volume being made it would be fine to add a few more if you liked it hot.

The ginger, lemon and peppercorns went in the muslin with the garlic, chilli and salt joining the fruit, sugar and vinegar in the Preserving Pan. I'd got the large pan off the top shelf in the kitchen where it had been collecting sticky dust, as I figure it's best to use stainless steel when making chutney, especially with something as acidic as rhubarb. The non stick ones would probably not have suffered too much but I don't really like the thought of Rhubarb and Teflon Chutney.

After several hours of simmering the chutney looked thick enough to pot, it's fine to have a small amount of liquid in the top of the jars as this is absorbed during the 3 months of maturing time. The chutney looked very rich and dark as it went into the jars, I shall look forward to tasting it in August, preferably outside with a nice lump of cheese.

Recipe Timings

0.5hrs preparation
2 hrs simmering
0.5 hr potting

Taste Test

This is a good fruity chutney, great in an everyday cheese sandwich. It doesn't taste overly of rhubarb, and is given extra depth by the addition of the apricots.

When making marmalade last week I froze some unused lemon peel with the thought of using it for something constructive. After some thought, and research, I decided to have a go at candied peel, not something I'd usually even use.

Hopefully having some in the house will be useful when it comes to baking, and for mincemeat at Christmas if it lasts that long. I wanted to have a wider range of peel than just two lemons, so the bag in the freezer grew to contain the following:

Peel of three lemons - 170g (left over from marmalade making)
Peel of 1 grapefruit - 140g (a breakfast treat)
Peel of five oranges - 255g (a regular winter craving)
Peel of 2 limes - 100g (I wanted some green in the mix, so cooked Thai curry)

I pulled all this out the freezer in the morning so it was thawed when I came to prepare it.

There seemed to be several ways of preparing the peel, either repeated boiling and draining, or just prolonged boiling, but all recipes needed the peel to have the membranes scraped off and then be sliced. This took about 20 minutes, I wasn't too fussy about removing all the pith as I'd read it added to the succulency of the finished product, which made sense - the more pith, the more sugar could be soaked up.

Roughly following the recipe from Elise Bauer's Simply Recipes blog, I boiled all the peel 3 times draining in between.

See here for the candied peel recipe.

Recipe Costs

£0.00 665g left over citrus peel £1.39 1.5kg sugar
£1.39 Total
£1.63 per kg of Candied Peel (50% of the cost at Tesco)

I choose to use the above recipe as it had a nice adaptable way of measuring the sugar syrup - using cups as a volume measure. It also gave me a chance to use one of these lovely measuring cups from Nigella Lawson.

I had 6 cups of peel, which wasn't too tightly packed, in hindsight I should probally have packed it in a bit more, as I ended up with way too much syrup. Having surplus did mean that I wasn't concerned about the pan catching or drying out. I do also now have a bottle of citrus flavoured sugar syrup, which makes a nice drink with fizzy water. I may be tempted to try a gin fizz this weekend.
In went the peel to the syrup.

After two and a half hours of simmering the peel had turned translucent, so I drained it and left it on racks before dusting with granulated sugar. I'll be letting it dry out in a large bowl for a few days before packing into jars.

Recipe Timings

1 hrs Preparation 0.5 hr Draining and Dusting
0.5 hr Potting
2.5 hrs Cooking
48 hr Drying

Taste Test

It tastes wonderful, initially sweet with a citrus bite afterward, with also a real difference between fruits. The lime could have done with being a bit softer - more boiling next time. Being able to cut the peel to size will be excellent when cooking with it.