When you have lemons....

Ok, you know how to fill in that sentence, right? And don't get me wrong, I LOVE good lemonade. I can drink it by the quart. But lemons come into season during the winter, when lemonade is not the first thing on my mind. While strong alcoholic beverage with a lemon edge is always on my mind, lemonade is something I drink in summer, and in Mexican restaurants - FOR LUNCH.

So, when you have bags of lemons that, say, a certain Citrus Bomb has sent you, what do you do?

I had always thought that Moroccan preserved lemons were an exotic, difficult thing to make. I equated them, somehow, with a lemon chutney that I used to make. That one was a five day affair, with lemons having pin pricks put into them, sitting in a bowl of salt, washing off the salt, and then multiple steps. Starting with five pounds of lemons, you would get a magnificent three pints of chutney that you couldn't eat for three months. Well, after the wait, the stuff was delicious, but as Peggy Lee so aptly put it , "Is that all there is?' So, with that in mind, I put Moroccan preserved lemons out of my head.

One day, leafing through Paula Wolfert's amazing book "Couscous and Other good food from Morocco," I came upon the recipe. Now, Ms. Wolfert praises authenticity and is not above printing a recipe that calls upon you to stew something for 11 hours, followed by more work. Oh, the stuff is wonderful, but the work is massive. So, I laughed to myself, "this is gonna be GOOD.

Well, it is. But it's easy. This is a two ingredient recipe, or three if you add an intangible. You need lemons, salt, and time. That, incidentally, is NOT a misspelling for thyme. This is a recipe where you DO have to wait for a month to use the guys. It's worth it. It's worth even more if you wait 3 months. More after 6. So, here's my suggestion: take the recipe below, and double or triple it. Mark your jars as 1/3/6, and then use them along those lines. I WILL say, however, that a little of this stuff goes a long way, and your one month jar may last you 3 months.

Here's what you do. You will need 10 or so meyer lemons. These are better, because the skin is softer ,and the flavor is more complex. If you don't have them, regular Lisbon lemons are fine, as is a mix of the two.

You're going to use 10 lemons to make a quart of preserves. Now, that may sound like a lot, but bear with me here. You may actually wind up using less.

You need a sterile quart jar with a good sealing lid. And also, a quarter cup of salt (let's review measurements here: a quarter cup of salt is 4 tablespoons).

Take the six smallest lemons, wash and dry them. Then make cuts longitudinally, cutting the lemon into quarters BUT NOT SEPARATING THEM . You want the six smallest ones because these are going into the jar, whole, and it ain't easy.

Now, take a tablespoon of the salt, which is preferably kosher, and put it in the jar. Use as much of it as you can to salt the insides of each of the six lemons. Put them in the jar and BE ROUGH. Squeeze them in, pound them in, shove them in as far as they can go. This is all necessary to get the juice out. After you have the six lemons in the jar, take a look. Are they covered with lemon juice? Probably not. That's why you have the other four. Start squeezing right over the lemons in order to cover the fruit. Don't worry about pits or anything else, just squeeze. If you have any extra salt, put it in at this point.

Seal up the jars, and shake them. Then put them in a dark cool place for at least a month.

You're done. See???? As you use them, you can replenish them with other lemons. It would behoove you to dump the older ones out and put the younger ones on the bottom (always a good idea, by the way: putting the younger prettier ones on the bottom). When I use them, I scrape away the pulp, wash the skin and only use that. Chopped up, it makes a superb relish on tuna, on lamb, on any of the serious red meats. I was very tempted to use it in mayonnaise on steak sandwiches for lunch tomorrow. You can also use that salty juice, in cocktails like bloody marys, or anything you can concoct.

Now, think about what I've just given you. What's about a month away? Hmmmmm? Wanna give an unusual gift that speaks of YOU, isn't all that expensive, sure as hell isn't a lot of work, and is probably something they've never gotten (If, by the way, your recipient says something like "Oh, Moroccan preserved lemons, how quaint" never visit that person again).

I am very serious about the idea of using these as gifts. You don't have to make a project of this and make six or seven jars at once. It will take you all of about ten minutes to make a jar of these, so if you buy lemons on the way home from work, you're set.

I have a bunch of friends who I think are going to be real intrigued by this recipe. Ben, the mad Englishman, Michael the "kitchen photographer," Kim, the Citrus Bomb, and Sue, the gal who knows everything, are all on the list to get this one. Love ya all. Try it.