Charlotte wrote about preserved lemon recipes:
Quoted message said:Also, I'd be interested in the Zuni recipe. I have a lemon
tree, so I have preserved lemons :-).
I just happen to have that recipe handy:
Preserved Lemon-Caper Butter (from _The Zuni Cafe Cookbook_)
"The one butter sauce I have not abandoned for salsa or
vinaigrette. Unapologetically rich, but pungent and chunky
with bits of fragrant citrus. Serve it with salmon, Pacific
swordfish, bass, spearfish, or albacore. Garnish with
potatoes roasted in their skins and wedges of slightly
bitter grilled escarole or endive or blanched leeks. Or
offer with artichokes or asparagus as a first course."
FOR ABOUT ONE CUP:
2 tablespoons dry white wine A few drops of water
1/2 pound unsalted butter (2 sticks), sliced and chilled 1
tablespoon capers, rinsed, pressed dry between towels, and
barely chopped 1 tablespoon rinsed, chopped Preserved
Lemon or Limequat, seeds removed Champagne vinegar, white
wine vinegar, or lemon juice, as needed
Choose a heavy saucepan 6 to 8 inches in diameter. I use a
2-quart saucepan: for a larger quantity of sauce you can use
a wider pan, but for this small quantity, a relatively small
surface area is desirable. In a wide pan, changes in the
necessarily shallow pool of liquid would happen very
quickly, before you noticed, much less had time to cool the
pan to slow or stop them. This leads to caramelized wine or
separated butter sauce.
Place the wine in the saucepan and reduce by half over
medium heat. (If you are concerned that you won't know when
it reaches that point, first measure 1 tablespoon of wine
into the pan and tilt it, and try to remember what that
amount looks like in that pan. Then add the second
tablespoon of wine.) The reduced wine should be deep
yellow, not amber. Taste it: it should be pungent, but not
acrid. (If it is, pour it out, rinse the pan, and start
again.) As soon as the wine is reduced, pull the pan from
the heat and immediately add a few drops of water and a few
slices of the cold butter. Swirl, reduce the heat slightly,
and return the pan to the burner. Whisk, continuing to
swirl the pan on the burner, until the first pats of butter
are nearly melted. Add another few, and continue whisking
to encourage emulsion. The emerging sauce will gain body as
you add more butter. Don't allow it to boil; if it starts,
quickly pull the pan from the burner, add a drop, or a few
drops, of water at the edge, and swirl the pan to
restabilize the emulsion.
Once all of the butter is added, stir in the capers and
preserved lemon. Taste. The sauce will taste underseasoned
at first, but it will get saltier as the condiments infuse
it. Add a few drops of white wine, vinegar, or lemon juice
if you would like the sauce more [censored].
You can keep the warm sauce covered in a warm spot, but not
over direct heat - a double boiler is a fine idea, but it
is imminently possible to break the sauce by resting it
over, or in, hot water. We hold butter sauces in a double
boiler, but instead of using water we stuff the bottom
chamber with crumpled newspaper. This arrangement insulates
the fragile sauce both from direct heat and from drafts.
[BOB'S NOTE: Seems like a wide-mouth thermos would do an
even better job.]
Bob
