Preserved Lemons #3 - Haddock En Papillote

I was pondering how to use my preserved lemons to make a fish dish, and I happened to watch an episode of "Top Chef: Masters", which just wrapped up, where one of the cheftestants was inspired by the concept of "Mystery" to make a fish dish en papillote, which means it was baked in paper (usually parchment, but sometimes aluminum foil or paper bags) with some other goodies. This put the idea into my head of using my preserved lemons in an "en papillote" dish of my own.

I went to the grocery store and looked through the selection of frozen fish. I settled on a pair of large frozen haddock loins, for no particular reason other than they weren't particularly expensive (as opposed to my first choice, halibut, which WAS), and it was a nice, firm fish, and relatively healthy.

To go in the paper package with the fish, I bought a box of couscous, a can of chickpeas, some scallions and some mushrooms. I had some fish stock at home I wanted to use, along with the lemons and the olives from my first attempt at using preserved lemons.

So, the day before I made this, I placed the frozen haddock loins in my refrigerator to thaw. The next day, I prepared the couscous by emptying the box of couscous into a bowl, along with the drained can of chickpeas. I brought two cups of fish stock, some turmeric for color, a generous pinch of cinnamon, and a generous pat of butter to a boil, and poured it over the couscous and chickpeas, and let them sit.

(Note: None of the measurements in this are very precise; it's a very flexible, forgiving recipe)

Meanwhile, I preheated my oven to 400 degrees. Then I diced the bunch of green onions (8 of them), and thinly sliced about 1 cup of fresh mushrooms. I also minced about 1/4 cup of green olives and I took out 4 preserved lemon quarters, which got their pulp and pith removed. These were finely sliced into thin strips and set aside. Finally, I took out the two thawed haddock loins and cut them in half cross-wise.

Now that the prep work was done, it was time to do the assembly. I took out my roll of parchment paper, and cut 4 large squares from it (side note: parchment paper is easy to find at any supermarket; it's in the same section as the aluminum foil, although you may prefer using foil). I laid one piece of paper on a dinner plate, and put 1/4 of the couscous and chickpeas onto it. Then I sprinkled over 1/4 each of the green onions, olives, and mushrooms. On top of that, I laid one piece of the haddock loin and then carefully laid out one bunch of the sliced lemon peel over that, and salted and peppered the mixture. Finally, since I was feeling a bit fancy, I finished it off by pouring a generous splash of white wine over everything. Then I took the four corners of the paper and brought them to the center over the fish, and bound them together by wrapping some twine around the bunched paper and tying it off. Into the oven they went, for 20 minutes - the bag the haddock came in said 15, but I wanted to be sure. And...



Everything came out nice and neat and perfectly done. The flavors all melded together nicely, and the parchment paper held up to cooking just fine - no drips, tears or leakage making a mess in my baking dish. The fish was flaky and delicious, and tasted faintly of the lemon peel. The couscous had absorbed all of the flavors in the parcel - the onion,mushroom, fish and lemon were all detectable and it was delicious. A definite cook-again, although next time I'm going to use bigger fish fillets or maybe try it with some large shrimp or even mix some bay scallops into the couscous with the lemon and make a sort of miniature fish casserole.

Stewed Lemon Chicken - Attempt #2

For my second attempt at using preserved lemons, I went back to a simpler recipe: one whole chicken in a crockpot. This time I was looking to avoid the overpowering flavor of the olives and bringing out the lemons more. I wasn't feeling particularly adventurous this time, so I stuck with flavors that I knew would work with chicken and lemon: just some fresh rosemary and garlic.

I only used two quarters of preserved lemon for this one. I scooped the pulp out of the quarters and set those aside. Then I trimmed away a bit of the pith, and minced the rind. I also took two big sprigs of fresh rosemary (courtesy of my Mom planting it in a box on my patio during one visit - thanks Mom!), stripped the leaves and minced those as well, adding them to the lemon rind. Then I chopped one large, fat clove of garlic and added that to the lemon and rosemary, and then whisked in some olive oil to all that to make a sort of chunky paste.

Next, I took my chicken (a 3 1/2 lb. roaster), and carefully separated the skin from the breast with my paring knife - this was the only tricky part, since it's hard for me to get under the chicken skin far enough towards the neck without tearing it near the cavity. I stuffed as much of the lemon-rosemary paste under the skin as I could, and then put it in the crockpot. I drizzled some olive oil over the chicken, and rubbed it over the surface, both to coat the chicken and also to distribute the lemon-rosemary paste a bit under the skin. I threw in some new potatoes and some unpeeled cloves of garlic around the chicken, and stuffed the pulp from the lemon quarters into the cavity of the chicken. Then I sprinkled a generous amount of Kosher salt over the chicken, and also a ground pepper blend for spiciness, and tucked a sprig of rosemary under each leg of the chicken. Lid on, set the crockpot to low, and off to the office I go!

Before

Nine hours later, I got home and my kitchen smelled delightfully of garlic, rosemary, and lemon. The chicken had stewed in it's own juices and was a nice golden brown. The garlic cloves were soft and mushy and sweet and nutty and the potatoes were easily pierced with a fork.

After

This turned out a LOT better than the previous preserved lemon recipe. The chicken was tender and falling off the bone, and both it and the potatoes tasted wonderful from sitting in the herb-garlic-lemon-enhanced chicken juices. I just mushed the potatoes a bit and smeared the soft garlic cloves into them, and spooned the juice from the chicken over them and the chicken, and everything was deeeeeeee-licious. The flavor of the lemons was noticeable, but not overpowering, and nothing needed more salt or pepper.

I'm definitely going to be revisiting this recipe next time whole chickens are on sale, but I think the next time I use the lemons, I'm going to try then with seafood and see how that goes. I have to say, it was really heartening to find a dish I really liked that used the preserved lemons after the unpleasant encounter with those DAMN OLIVES AND YES I AM STILL HATING ON THOSE THINGS.

Moroccan Chicken with Preserved Lemons

This was the first recipe that I used my preserved lemons on, which is courtesy of the Epicurious website - you can read the whole recipe here. I'm thinking this is actually a pretty common recipe, because I looked at about six different versions of the recipe before settling on this one. The others either asked for ingredients I didn't have (I don't keep harissa on hand, typically), or used chicken livers (not a line I'm willing to cross for this blog just yet).

So, I set to work on this recipe. I did the whole mise en place to start, and right away I ran into a little trouble. You see, the recipe called for 16 pitted green olives. I'd bought them with pits. No biggie - not hard to pit an olive, or so I thought. Apparently, olives are different from cherries and avocadoes in the sense that while cherries and avocadoes can have their pits coaxed out of them pretty easily, olives HANG the F*CK ON to their pits with their FINGERNAILS. My first three attempts at pitting an olive wound up with me nearly slicing my finger open with my knife, and the accursed pits lying on my cutting board, glaring at me triumphantly with tatters of olive flesh hanging off of them, in a puddle of brine.

The irrational part of my mind took over. Instead of satisfying my mouth's curiosity towards preserved lemon, I would satisfy my ears with the statisfying crunch the pits would make... when I crushed them with my claw hammer. Unfortunately, the pits were slippery and hitting them with a hammer only caused them to shoot across my kitchen and hit the far wall. I was completely frustrated at this point, but then I noticed that only the pit had gone flying - the flesh of the olive (what was left of it) was still on the cutting board. That was an "A-HA" moment I needed, and I dumped out the 16 olives I needed, and proceeded to GENTLY squish each one with the flat side of my knife. The pits came out pretty easily, and I cut the olive flesh into strips. The rest of the recipe proceeded smoothly; it's not a hard one to pull off. And the finished product looked just like the photo from the recipe.

And for all that... I didn't like the finished product. I'm not the biggest fan of green olives, save for in martinis, and the taste of the olives kind of overpowered most of the other ingredients, except for the preserved lemon. Which, I don't think I cut out enough of the pith from the lemon before putting them in this recipe - they were too bitter, although the lemon flavor itself was incorporated nicely into the chicken breast, which was about the only part of the recipe I kinda sorta liked.

What I DID really like was the couscous I made to go with this. I toasted a handful of cashews, pecans, and almonds in a frying pan, and prepared a batch of couscous with chicken stock, a dash of garlic powder, and butter. When the couscous was ready, I fluffed it, and tossed in the toasted nuts and a little bit of chopped dried apricot. Yum

So, the first recipe I used preserved lemons in didn't go over so well. But, I wasn't about to give up so easily after waiting a month to make them. I already knew what I was going to attempt for my next recipe, and this time, NO ACCURSED BRINY GALLSTONES-OF-SATAN UNPITTED FREAKIN' OLIVES!

Preserved Lemons

A few months ago, I was reading one of my Indian cookbooks for the umpteenth time, and came to a section that detailed the creation of pickled lemons. I'd also read about something similar in one of my Nigella Lawson cookbooks, although the recipe in that one was for "preserved", not "pickled". Most recipes and references to this ingredient call it "preserved", so that's what I'm going with, even though in both cases it's still technically a pickle. The idea of using these in cooking sounded interesting to me, so I decided to try and have a go at making and using my own batch of preserved lemons.

I wanted the unsweetened version, both as my own personal preference, and also because the recipe was a bit simpler: quartered lemons, kosher salt, and lemon juice. Combine and let sit for a month - piece of cake. I was tempted to use spices like cloves or bay leaves like my Indian cookbook did, but I didn't want to shoehorn myself into a particular flavor of preserve that might limit what I could use them for, so I kept it simple. The Nigella recipe used quite a bit of sugar and resulted in a much sweeter pickled lemon (of course), and also called for some boiling and just sounded a little fussier than I wanted to deal with.

It just so happened that at the time my supermarket had Meyer lemons in stock (they usually don't), and on sale. I'd never made anything with Meyer lemons before, and I'd read they were sweeter and more aromatic than regular lemons. They're also rounder, more plump with pulp and juice than regular lemons, and a slightly orange tint to their rind that makes them particularly bright and hints at more intense flavor than their paler brothers. I bought about a dozen of them and brought them home. Half-dozen of them got quartered and I managed to fit them snugly into a bell jar. Over those, I dumped a large amount of Kosher salt.

Then came the problem - the juice from the remaining six lemons wasn't nearly enough to fill the jar the rest of the way. I only got about a third of the way up the jar. So, I figured I needed another dozen Meyers, but unfortunately there were only about seven left at the store and three of them were ones I didn't pick for a reason - they were a bit soft and sickly-looking. But, I figured since I was only after their juice it didn't really matter what they looked like on the outside. I had to go with regular lemons for the rest of the juice I needed, but I did manage to fill the jar the rest of the way.

Once the jar was filled, it was a simple matter just to keep it in my refergierator, and gently shake it every few days to keep the brine circulating, and do it for a month. Ok, so I had a generous amount of pickled lemons at my disposal - the question was what was I going to do with them? It seemed that Middle Eastern, particularly Moroccan was the way to go, since preserved lemons figure most prominently in that region's food. I did find a recipe that intrigued me, but that's a subject for my next post. Later!