If you close your eyes, you can imagine you are wending your way through the crowded streets of the casbah, with the camels and the open-air markets and the heady aroma of tagines cooking over charcoal fires. A bite of preserved lemon can do that to you, transport you to a land you have never seen or perhaps back to a land you once called home. It is the secret ingredient to cooking throughout North Africa but is especially associated with Morocco. Along with couscous, it is one of the foods that define the entire region.
Preserved lemons are one of those ingredients that, the first time you try it, you ask, “What is that taste?” It is definitely like a lemon, but it has been wonderfully intensified. It’s like a SuperLemon.
Preserved lemons are readily available at Middle Eastern groceries, international groceries and specialty stores, but why buy them when you can make them yourself? All it takes are lemons, salt and patience.
Patience, because it takes a month for the salt to work its magic on the lemons. But during those four weeks your anticipation builds. You think about the taste that will await you when the lemons are ready, you start planning how to use them. You may even start to think that you are building them up too much in your mind.