The Matter of Lucky in Lemons

Dear Tamar:

I have a beautiful bag of Meyer lemons from a local backyard, and all I can think to make is sweet stuff—curd or lemon almond cake or jam/marmalade. I’ve never quite gotten the hang of using salt-preserved lemons. What other things could I use them for? Sweet or savory or both, preferably using no eggs (sadly scarce), and something I don’t have to eat right away.

-Lucky in lemons

Dear Lucky,

A pensive child, I always hated the idiom: “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” I hated it the same way I hated the movie, Pollyanna—which is to say in a way that was more about me than about it. Neither the advice about lemons nor Pollyanna’s protagonist’s radical optimism fit me. For which I resented them, and myself.

It’s taken decades for me to realize that there are ways out of negativity other than pressing and squeezing it into a liquid confection. For me, and maybe for other ruminative souls, less unnatural is to simply notice everything about the lemons—or their analogue. To scrape off a bit of glossy skin and taste it, noting the strength of flavor in the finest shavings. To hold it in a palm, to feel the lemon’s weight. To observe its density of color, its oily smell, how it sits in its bowl on the table. Noticing a lemon—or its analogue—rids it of its abstractions—sour thing; unwanted thing—and replaces them with specificity: this lemon.

I’ve thought a lot about lemons. But I submitted the question of your lemons to my mother. My mother preserves Meyer lemons every winter and plows through her jars so robustly that she sometimes has to reclaim one from a jar she’d previously handed over as “mine.” (Though you didn’t ask: she acknowledges that Meyer lemons can be preserved with just salt and lemon juice. But she strongly recommends adding several cloves, a bay leaf, and a single fresh red chile to the jar.) When my mother’s lemons are ready, she removes several from their brine and, after removing the pithy and seedy insides, purees the thick, savory skin into a paste. This she administers as a culinary panacea.

Plain whole milk yogurt becomes a tart, salty sauce once she’s added a spoonful of lemon paste. Techina—made by blending salt, lemon juice, water, and garlic with tahini paste—with lemon paste appended, becomes a dipping sauce non-pareil. Or a drizzling sauce for roasted cauliflower, or for roasted fish, or even plain rice. My mother (over my shoulder now) asserts that a little bit of lemon paste gently mixed into roasted red peppers turns that vegetable into a salad. (She wants me to recommend adding a few capers and some parsley.) Or, rub preserved-lemon paste onto chicken skin and leave it for a few hours or overnight, then grill or roast it. Ditto for lamb. Ditto for fish. Or make a simple tomato sauce of onion, garlic, canned tomatoes, olive oil, a few olives, and a bit of lemon paste, and poach fish in it. This, over long-grain rice, approaches the divine. (She would use swordfish.)

Or, don’t make lemon paste, but remove the peel from a preserved lemon and dice it. Mix this with vinegar marinated shallots and olive oil for one of the most refreshing vinaigrettes the world has ever known. Or scatter the chopped peel over roasted or boiled vegetables. Or mix it into mayonnaise for a citrusy burger spread. Or into ricotta for a pasta sauce. Or, combine it with chopped parsley and olive oil for a dolloping sauce. Or with cilantro, chili flakes, a touch of cumin and olive oil for a different but no less delicious dolloping sauce.

Dear cook, I correct the record: When life gives you lemons, all you are contractually obligated by existence to do is to stop, wait, and not make any decisions about the lemons’ destiny before getting to know them, and letting the lemons and circumstances guide your hand. In other words, know that any amount of lemons, for any amount of time on earth, makes you lucky. And then, relying on close observation, courage, and my mother’s various techniques, eat the lemons.