When life hands you lemons, make hamad m’rakhad

August 25, 4:57 PMFood ExaminerEric Burkett

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These lemons are destined for greater things.

Stashed behind the cream cheese and the chicken stock, back on the top shelf in the smaller walk-in of the kitchen where I work, you’ll find a 1.5 gallon plastic container filled with salt and lemons. They’re preserved lemons, or hamad m’rakhad in their native Morocco.

Preserved lemons are a distinctive but important ingredient in much of Moroccan cooking. Indeed, they’ve become an important ingredient in my cooking at work. Looking for flavors that reflected what we have available here in San Francisco, I was naturally drawn to Mediterranean cuisines, and the cooking of North Africa – with its vibrant tastes and colors – was a natural.

Preserved lemons are a key ingredient. Tangy and salty and earthy, preserved lemons add a piquancy to food quite unlike any other flavoring. The good news is they’re easy to make (you can buy them as well, but why?); the bad news, if the chance to explore new tastes can be called bad, is that you have to plan in advance. Preserved lemons, like any pickled food, require a little time to do their thing and transform themselves.

You’ll need:

Lemons (thin skinned are best; pick lemons without any skin blemishes)
Kosher salt (allow one cup per lemon)
A clean container with a tight sealing lid
A sharp paring knife

• Wash and scrub the lemons and then wipe dry. Now comes the only really difficult part:
• Pierce the lemon from just inside one end of the fruit and slice across lengthwise as if you were cutting it in half but stop just before you reach the opposite end.
• Rotate the lemon and perform the same cut again. The quarters you’ve created should remain attached at each end but the lemon will otherwise open up.
• Pour a layer of salt on the bottom of your container and then pour salt into the opening of the lemon. Repeat this with each of the lemons, alternating layers of fruit and salt.
• Push the fruit down to press out some of the juice. When you’ve filled your container with as many lemons as you want, cover it with more salt and then seal the container.
• Turn the container over every day for the first four or five days allowing the juices to blend with and dissolve the salt. After three weeks, you’ll have your own batch of hamad m’rakhad.

Tomorrow we’ll begin exploring some recipes using preserved lemons.