Raise your hand if you need a super cool, thoughtful, unique, homemade, Christmas gift! I did these as gifts a few year ago and they are just so visually stunning. If you take my advice and make for someone I highly recommend you give them some recipe ideas to go with it because the people I gave them too had no idea how to use them, ha! I will link a few below but they pair really well with fish or chicken or maybe even in a homemade salsa. They give any recipe a strong Mediterranean vibe or Moroccan feel maybe. Chicken Tagine anyone!?! You don’t eat the flesh, just the rind so I think the idea feels foreign to most people. Picture a pickled lemon rind if you will. They pair so well with capers, olives, garlic, cinnamon…I can go on and on but I won’t. The flavor is pretty intense so a little goes a long way and to describe the flavor in one word I would say explosive! Maybe even transcendental ;). Just writing about this is making me excited for my next batch to be ready! These take about a month to be ‘ready’ so make them now so they are ready for someone special at Christmas :). I used to follow this blog called Local Milk and she posted about these years ago. I don’t know about any of you but even if I know a recipe by heart I still like to look at it while I am making it just to make sure I don’t miss anything essential. I searched google for her recipe and it was NOT THERE! So not cool! So I’m posting this mainly for memory and also so I can check my OWN blog from here on out when I need a refresher on the recipe ;). For this you will need some good canning jars…something like these. My favorite place to get these jars is TJ max or Homegoods or even Target. Buy a jar that looks pretty so it looks good as a gift! Also find some fun twine or ribbon and gift tags :). I’m not a big fan of the twine I used below but it was all I had around the house so you get the idea ;). Also, you can use a smaller jar like I did or a bigger mason jar and just stuff with more than I did. TRY THIS recipe!!! You won’t be sorry :).
Ingredients for one small jar:
- 2-3 lemons
- coarse sea salt
- cinnamon sticks
- black or pink peppercorns
- whole cloves
- bay leaf
Method: Using a cutting board carefully cut away the bottoms of your lemons called the pith. You don’t want to cut all the way to the flesh just the white nubby part off of both ends. Next standing the lemon upright you will cut into quarters, BUT, you will not cut all the way through, just down far enough so it opens up like a flower but is still an intact lemon. Fill the inside of the lemon with coarse sea salt and smash it down into your clean jar smashing all of the juice out. Cover the lemon in the jar with maybe two tablespoons of course sea salt. Repeat this step for the next lemon and mash it on top of the other lemon into the jar. The idea is to fully cover the lemons in their own juice and the sea salt until it is almost to the top of the jar. If you need more lemons cut up another and repeat the step. I used 2 1/2 lemons for my jars but probably could have used 3. Now add in peppercorns, bay leaf, cinnamon stick, whole cloves and cover again with coarse sea salt. Make sure entire contents is covered in FRESH lemon juice before putting the lid on. Now you will just put into a dark corner of your kitchen and wait! In approximately 30 days they will be ready for use! To use you will pull the lemons out and peel away the flesh and dice them up. Return to the brine in the jar and store in the fridge and eat them by themselves or add them to any dish that sounds good! Here are a few recipes I would use them in:
Nourish 