AGATHA CHRISTIE'S LEMON

As Lemon Week winds down, with nary a lemon related craft project, Agatha Christie's Miss Lemon, Poirot's efficient secretary comes to mind. It is her destiny to play  no larger role in Poirot's daily life than that of appointment keeper and fetcher of tisannes.Her greatest ambition is to come up with  up with the perfect filing system. While she  she waits for inspiration, her routine is only interrupted by  Poirot and and his sidekick  Arthur Hastings' s adventures.
 I had  hoped  to run this blog in Miss Lemon's minimalist manner. That is, I would fetch tea and dream of the perfect filing system while  talented artists and artisans discussed their work ad shared projects.   It is too early in the game to know whether this is a good plan. Judging from Lemon Week, I need to to be a bit more aggressive in my search for guest bloggers.  For the moment, I offer a couple of recipes for lemony delights. The first, Preserved Lemons--lemons pickled in salt-- is embarassingly simple. The glorious part only becomes apparent when one dds the results to other dishes, such as an eggplant, tomato, onion and cheese casserole.Then it packs terrific olfactory and gustory punch--think sunshine, blue skies, green seas and tropical flowers in a spoon.

PRESERVED LEMONS
6 lemons, scrubbed and seeded
1 cup of lemon juice
1 cup of kosher salt

Sterilyse a canning jar. Fill it with alternate layers of lemons and kosher. Add lemon juice. Seal jar and let it sit for a day or two, turning it upside down, occasionally. Store in the refrigerator for three weeks before using the pickled lemons. Remove pulp before use. Pickles will keep for up to six months.


Tomorrow I will post a recipe for lemon curd, which my daughter used with great success as  filler for Linzer cookies and as a topping for scones.