When life gives you lemons; preserve them

The sun is shining and nothing gets you in the mood for summer like lemons, writes Valerie O’Connor.

After a recent abysmal eating experience in a new restaurant, I came home feeling more than dissatisfied.

I’m all about bringing it to a restaurant’s attention if the food is bad, but let’s be honest, the reason most people don’t complain is because it ruins the happy buzz at the table.

Suddenly you are a cranky-pants who is never happy and the small talk and jolly banter of the day is brought down.

Having had to settle for chips and tap water (seriously, aren’t there more people who don’t eat beasts?), I arrived home with a hungry gap that needed to be filled and I was done with lentils or beans.

One of my favourite cookbooks for omnivores is Jerusalem by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi. All the recipes work and the book is full of the history and politics of the food.

I found a recipe for a spinach salad I hadn’t made and I miraculously had all the ingredients to hand.

Sumac is a lemony spice mixture used for many middle-eastern dishes and is well worth having in the spice drawer. I also found the dregs of my two-year-old jar of preserved lemons.

Now is the time for lemons, the sun is shining and nothing says summer more than lemon on everything. When life gives you lemons, preserve those lemons.

Preserved lemons

These are an essential part of middle Eastern cookery and an easy way to pep up a mildly spiced dish or a fried rice or couscous.

Sterilise a one litre jar.

Ingredients

• 8-10 lemons, ideally unwaxed
• 4-5 tblsp sea salt
• Sprig rosemary
• 1 fresh red or green chilli

Method Juice four of the lemons and set aside. Spilt the remaining fruit by cutting a cross in them from the top all the way down to just below the base.

Hold the lemons over the jar and stuff each one with a tablespoon of the sea salt. Pack them as tightly as you can into the jar.

Push in the rosemary and chili and top up with enough lemon juice to almost cover the lemons.

Close the jar and leave in a dark place, it will get quite effervescent, so open it daily to let out the gases.

Keep in the fridge and use as needed, the flavour will continue to improve over time. Mine lasted two years so make double if you like.

To use the lemons you actually just want the peel, so pull one out and push away the lemon flesh and just chop the peel and add it to your chosen dish.

Spinach and date salad

There should be plump baby spinach leaves at markets soon, but in the meantime make do with what you can get in the shops.

This salad uses up leftover pitas and all manner of bits and bobs and is a ‘meaty’ meatless flavour explosion, very filling too.

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp white wine vinegar
• 1/2 medium red onion, thinly sliced
• 100g pitted dates, quartered lengthways
• 30g unsalted butter (just use olive oil if you are dairy free)
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 small pitas, about 100g, roughly torn into 4cm pieces, these can be stale
• 75g whole unsalted almonds, roughly chopped
• 2 tsp sumac
• 1/2 tsp chilli flakes
• 150g baby spinach leaves; washed
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• salt

METHOD

Put the vinegar, onion, and dates in a small bowl and cover with the vinegar, leave to marinate for 20 minutes and then drain the excess vinegar away.

Heat the butter and half the olive oil in a large pan and add the torn-up pitas and the almonds, cook them on a medium heat for about five minutes until golden and crisp.

The pitas were highly prized here and I had to fight to keep a few for myself. Remove them from the heat and add the sumac, chili and a sprinkle of sea salt.

You can leave all the parts of this salad aside until you want to eat it.

Just toss the spinach with the pitas and nuts and divide it between two plates or bowls and add the dates mixture, squeeze over some lemon juice and a drizzle of olive oil and enjoy it outside in the sun.

With the clocks gone back and a grand stretch in the evenings, we should all be shoulder deep in muck and planting veg by now.

If you’re overloaded with seeds you’ve saved and would love to get together with like-minded ‘greenies’ then there’s the perfect event — it’s called Seedy Sunday.

Seed saving & exchange is not just a way of keeping down costs for growers, but is also a vital step in protecting and increasing local biodiversity, as the seed markets of the world increasingly are dominated by a few major multinational companies.

The Irish Seed Savers Association and other expert seed-savers have also donated stock as well as information which will be available on the day.

Held in Kilmeady, the village has converted an unused Garda barracks into a model “Phoenix” centre, with landscaped gardens, inter-generational meeting rooms and sunroom pyramid and is opening its doors to An Meitheal Co-operative’s seed and plant sharing day on the afternoon of Sunday April 9 from 3pm to 5pm.

Fermenters can ferment again chez moi on April 6, check out valskitchen.com