Salted lemons

After having the amazing salted lemon Sprite at Cha Cha Moon a couple of months ago, I just had to preserve some lemons of my own to recreate the salty zing at home.  It’s not a drink that I’ve come across before but using preserved fruit, like kumquats and lemons, in uncarbonated drinks is very common in Hong Kong.

Preserved lemons are essential in Moroccan cooking apparently – read more about them at Serious Eats – but we intend to use them for cooking steamed fish and the unbelievable Sprite.

My mother and I set about making our salted lemons using a combination of this North African recipe from The Independent and our own pickling know-how.  Personally, I would be more inclined to follow the recipe with greater care and cover the lemons in more juice but, what can I say, my mother’s a maverick.

We chopped up about three large lemons and covered them with salt.  Then we put the lemon pieces into a sterilised jar, sprinkling more salt over each lemon layer.  When we got to the top of the jar, we pressed the lemons down firmly, poured on a bit more lemon juice and then closed it up.  Now we wait for a month.

I’ll report back to let you know how it goes.