Preserved Lemons

Let me tell you about one of my favorite ingredients. It's something that adds sunshine and happiness to any dish: preserved lemons. Yeah, regular fresh lemons can do much the same thing, but when you preserve a lemon, that is, pack it in salt and allow it to sit for a while, the lemon flavor seems more intense. And you can eat the whole thing. But maybe throw away the seeds.

So what to do with preserved lemons? A traditional North African condiment, found predominately in Moroccan cuisine, the lemons' flavor works beautifully with olives, lamb, chicken, and smoky harissa paste. I chop a bit up and put it in chicken salad, and I've stewed chicken thighs with tomatoes, roasted peppers, olives, and preserved lemons, too. Stir a little into mayo to make a nice topping for a lamb burger. You'll find several uses for preserved lemon in the Minxeats archives, for example in this swiss chard dish, this bean dip, and this chicken and fennel dish.

Preserved lemons even taste good in guacamole.

Making preserved lemons is the easiest thing ever. It just requires a bit of patience. Like six week's worth.

Preserved Lemons

Lemons (organic if you can find them; Meyer lemons are great)
Kosher Salt
Lemon juice
Jar large enough to hold lemons snugly

Cut the lemon nearly in half lengthwise, stopping about a half inch before you reach the other tip. Make another identical cut perpendicular to the first cut, so the lemon is nearly quartered. Holding it over the jar you're going to use, prise the four sections apart and pour kosher salt into the space between them. Close the lemon and place in the jar. Repeat with enough remaining lemons, squashing them as you put them in, that the jar is full and lemons are packed very snugly. Fill the remaining space with lemon juice and a couple spoons-full of salt. Cap the jar and shake it so the juice is evenly distributed.

Refrigerate, shaking every couple of days so any salt and juice that accumulate at the bottom is distributed through the lemons. I find it takes about a month to six weeks for the lemons to soften to the proper texture (they should feel cooked).

To use, cut off a the amount you need and rinse it (or not) before adding to your dish.

Yes, I started this post so long ago, we still had a Christmas-themed tablecloth on.

Preserved Lemon Guacamole

2 ripe avocados
1/8 of a preserved lemon, rinsed lightly and minced
3 scallions, finely chopped

Cut the avocados in half, remove the pit, and scoop the flesh into a bowl. Add the preserved lemon and scallions and mash with a fork until the desired texture. You shouldn't need to add salt, as the lemon is quite salty.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Gluten-Free Mango Lychee Crisp

One evening after dining at Hunan Taste, we popped into H Mart (since it's in the same shopping center) and picked up a few odds and ends from the produce department. There was a big bin of lychees that was being swarmed by women who seemed to be digging around for particular fruits. I had no idea what they were looking for, but put ten or so lychees in my bag and left them to their digging.

Lychees are weird fruits. When I was a kid, they were occasionally served as dessert in Chinese restaurants. They came straight from a can, preserved in syrup. They were oddly eye-ball-like and had a strange fleshiness. I wasn't sold.

Fresh ones are better. They're small and spiky, easy to peel, with a white fruit (and pit) inside. Still on the eyeball-ish side. I bought them green, which is apparently immature, although they were plenty sweet and juicy already. The texture of the fruit is similar to that of a grape, but more, I don't know...sinewy? Fibrous, I guess. The flavor is not far off from that of passion fruit and is very perfum-y. They're tasty, but I'm not big on the texture.

I had a mango left over from my Ananda chutney experiment and thought I'd make a fruit crisp with the mango and the lychee. Why not? It actually worked really well, especially with a scoop of ice cream on top.

You might have noticed the "gluten-free" label in the title of this post. I'm not going all special-diet on you, believe me. I still like gluten and eat plenty of it. But I figured I could use oat flour along with the oatmeal and make a gluten-free crisp as tasty as one with wheat flour.

Because lychees are oddly fibrous, it's best to chop them fairly finely. They are also juicy as heck, so make sure you add those juices to the crumble. You can sop 'em up with some cornstarch so the resulting crisp is actually crisp and not soggy.

Gluten-Free Mango Lychee Crisp

1 ripe mango
10 lychees
2 teaspoons sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/2 cup oatmeal
1/4 cup oat flour
1 tablespoon roughly chopped nuts (I used pistachios and walnuts)
1 tablespoon brown sugar
Pinch cardamom
Pinch cinnamon
Pinch salt
1 tablespoon butter, melted

Preheat oven to 375°F.

Peel and dice the mango. Peel, deseed, and chop the lychees finely. Toss the mango, lychee, and lychee juices with the sugar and cornstarch and divide the mixture between 4 half-cup or 2 one-cup oven-safe ramekins.

Combine the oatmeal, oat flour, nuts, brown sugar, and spices in a bowl. Pour over the melted butter and mix well. Sprinkle the oat mixture evenly over the mango/lychees.

Place ramekins on a baking sheet and bake for 30 minutes, until bubbly around the edges. Allow to cool a bit before eating.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

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Parts & Labor

We finally went to Parts & Labor. And I almost hate to admit that I loved everything about it.

Why do I hate admitting it? Well, for one thing, it's not much fun to write a review for a truly delicious meal. What else can be said other that dishes are delicious, amazing, tasty, well-prepared, outrageously good, and near perfect? And I can use all of those commendatory words for Parts & Labor.

For another thing, and I know I'm probably in the minority here, I think Spike Gjerde's restaurants are a bit pretentious. Like not serving lemons or soda (soda!) in cocktails at Shoo-Fly because neither are local products. (That policy has changed, due to public outcry. Sometimes you have to give the people what they want.) But Parts & Labor hits all the right notes--good food, good drinks, extremely pleasant service. We even got a table by a window, which made for good photos.

Charcuterie - smoked boar sausage, lomo, bastirma

Parts & Labor is very meat-centric, so vegetarians beware. The building, once a former tire shop, also houses the butchery for the Gjerde empire. Meat comes into the place whole (as in whole pigs and cows) and exits as sausage, charcuterie, and other meaty delights.

We started our meal with a selection of three items from the "salt house," aka charcuterie. There were six or so choices from which we selected a salami-like smoked boar sausage, lomo (a dry cured pork tenderloin), and bastirma, a highly seasoned air-dried beef. The latter, with it's curry-ish flavor, was the table's favorite, but all were outstanding.

Enormous lamb kielbasa

We tried the lamb kielbasa from the sausage selection of the menu. At $12, it was the most expensive selection on the list, but it's extreme deliciousness made it worth every penny. Plus, it was huge. The sausage's smokiness balanced the lamb's usual slight gaminess, and it was juicy and nicely seasoned. I think it was my favorite dish out of all, and we tried a lot.

Pork chop

My Dad is a bit of a fussy eater, and he likes his meat on the well-done side. It would have been a crime to order the restaurant's dry-aged beef well done, so we talked him into the pork chop, cooked to the well side of medium. It was moist and tender and even Dad enjoyed it.

16-oz rib eye

He wouldn't have enjoyed the rib-eye, which came medium-rare. Perfectly cooked and rested, the steak had a nice crust and added flavor from a topping of compound butter and bed of chimichurri sauce.

Korean short ribs, slaw

The Korean short ribs were a pretty close approximation of the kalbi one finds in a Korean restaurant, only, I think, more tender. The sweetness of the marinade was offset by a tangy slaw that would have been the only vegetable on the table had I not reminded our party that man does not live by meat alone.

Wood ash hominy

We tried a dish of hominy, which had a strong corn flavor and reminded me of the Southwest. At a book signing recently, someone lamented that hominy is seldom seen on restaurant menus these days, and to that I say...get thee to Parts & Labor.

Dirty rice with chicken livers, blood sausage, okra

I think the only dish that I had a complaint about was the dirty rice. While there was plenty of "dirt," in the form of chicken livers and blood sausage, I wanted it to taste even more funky.

Grilled potatoes

The grilled fingerling potatoes were buttery and perfect...

Hearth wok with swiss chard, banana peppers, turnips, mushrooms, fermented tomato, benne

...and the Hearth wok was a bowl of deliciousness. I guess I could complain that the serving was too small, compared to everything else on the table, but the combination of flavors was really nice. A little sweet, a little sour (but not agrodolce), a little salty.

After we pigged out on meat, we ordered dessert. It was, after all, my brother's birthday. He chose the chocolate lard cake. Don't worry, it doesn't taste of lard (maybe a bit disappointingly), just of rich chocolate cake with chocolate frosting.

Chocolate lard cake

Dad chose the blondie topped with peach conserve and an intriguing salty ice cream. This thing was huge, definitely share-able by two or more people, so I helped him. I had ordered only a single scoop of goat's milk ice cream, which was pleasantly goat-milky.

One hot blondie with salty ice cream and peach conserve

Mr Minx went for a peanut butter and bourbon concoction. It was good, but my favorite part was the super coffee-y ice cream that had noticeable bits of ground coffee beans. I wished I had ordered that AND the goat's milk flavor, but I had plenty to eat with sampling everyone else's desserts.

Bourbon caramel Peanut tart with coffee ice cream

Yes, we made complete pigs of ourselves, and I suffered when the bill came. But it was a special occasion and worth the splurge. I think on future visits we'll limit ourselves to 5 or 6 dishes, rather than 9. And maybe skip dessert. Or maybe we'll just do it all over again.



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