Pickled lemon

Pickled lemon - a Moroccan delicacy. This recipe, brilliant in its simplicity and ease of preparation, will change your culinary life forever. It is great as an addition to tagines, pickles, and all kinds of salads. It can also be added to the ... hummus!

Preparing pickled lemons takes only a moment. The flavours that can be tasted thanks to it will stay with us for the rest of our life. For pickling lemons we will need: lemon (preferably ecological ones, because they are pickled with its peel), coarse rock salt, allspice, bay leaves, whole black pepper, coriander seeds.

For pickling we choose lemon with a nice, mature and pristine peel. Lemons should be thoroughly washed with brush, then blanched with hot water. We also parboil a jar in which we put pickled lemons. The best would be a 1l jar, which can hold approximately 8-10 lemons.

Each lemon should be cut lengthwise into four, till ¾ of its length, rock salt should be put inside. So "stuffed" with the salt lemons we lay tightly in the jar. It is important that cut quarters do not fall apart. We squeeze the juice from the remaining lemons. Lemons in a jar should be salted down with rock salt. We put three bay leaves, 8 berries of allspice, 10 grains of pepper and 15 corianders. Everything should be poured with the juice from the remaining lemons.

We twist off the jar and put in the fridge. Lemons will be ready after two weeks, but they may be used after several months. It is important to store them in the fridge.

Ready spice is not only pulp but also lemon peel. We gently take off, with a knife, yellow, thin layer of lemon peel and chop it finely. We can add it to salads. While adding the whole pickled lemon to dishes and pickles, we must remember that it is extremely salty and the dish will not need more salt.