Simply citrus: Homemade syrups, salts, and preserved lemons

Citrus season is in full swing here, and I'm making the most of it. My lemon tree is churning out a generous bounty, and I'm loading my market bag with blood oranges, grapefruit, and some of the most spectacular navel oranges I've ever enjoyed. Today I have a handful of recipes to help you make full use of winter citrus while it's at its peak. These are all simple and economical recipes to help preserve the best of the season: syrups and frozen concentrates, finishing salts, and preserved lemons.

It's worth seeking out organic fruit for these recipes, particularly those that make use of the peel. This is a good time to score a bargain on organic citrus. These are easy to make with kids, too (be sure to supervise them if they use a grater).

If you're crazy for still more citrus, start a batch of limoncello that will be ready in time for summer, make lemon curd (or mango-lime curd, swoon!), or treat your favorite people to candied citrus peels.

Blood orange juice

Lemonade Syrup, and Blood Orange Variation

Store the syrup in the refrigerator for up to a week, or freeze as homemade juice concentrate. I love the taste of raw or organic sugar, but it adds a golden-brown tint. It's barely noticeable in lemonade, but it blunts the the vivid color of blood orange juice. This recipe yields four 8-oz. drinks; scale up or down to meet your needs.

1 cup sugar
1 cup water
1 cup lemon juice

Combine sugar and water in a saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve sugar. Let cool, the combine with lemon juice.

To prepare a drink, combine equal parts lemonade syrup with water — you may need to adjust proportions to suit your taste.

For concentrate, freeze portions in plastic containers, then store the frozen blocks in an airtight freezer bag or container.

Blood Orange Syrup: Substitute blood orange juice for lemon juice. This syrup is also especially good poured over shave ice or added to a glass of sparkling water. 

Frozen blocks of lemonade concentrate, waiting for summer

Citrus Salt

I intended to make this ages ago, after seeing it over at Steamy Kitchen, but only just got around to it after it was featured at 101 Cookbooks. Try citrus salt as a finishing touch with chicken, seafood, and vegetable dishes. Be sure to juice the fruit after removing the zest and use it to make the syrup recipes that follow.

organic lemons, oranges, and/or limes
sea salt

Scrub fruit well and dry thoroughly. Zest fruit, being careful not to remove the bitter white pith. Combine about 1 tablespoon of zest with 1/2 cup sea salt, mixing thoroughly with a fork.

Lay salt blend on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Let it sit out a while to dry, or put it in a 200 degree oven for 75 minutes to two hours, until zest is dry and crumbles easily between your fingers. You could do this in a dehydrator, too.

Store in an airtight container and it should keep for a few months.

Lemon salt, top, and orange-lime salt

Preserved Lemons

Try dicing preserved lemons and whisking them with a bit of olive oil, salt, and pepper for a fantastic dressing, as in my Persimmon and Fennel Salad. They're delicious with rice and other grains, in marinades, and atop simply cooked chicken and fish.

organic lemons
kosher salt or coarse sea salt
a large jar with tight-fitting lid
optional spices: cinnamon stick, cloves, cardamom pods, bay leaves, coriander seeds, fennel seeds, peppercorns

Be sure to have enough lemons to fill your jar, plus a few more for juice. First, sterilize your jar and lid by boiling them in water for 10 minutes.

Scrub lemons well and trim away any stems. Slice the lemons almost completely in half, but not all the way through. Make another cut, perpendicular to the first, so you've cut the lemons nearly into quarters. Sprinkle some salt in the bottom of the jar. Pack the cuts in the lemons with salt and put them in the jar. Pack firmly, squishing out some of the juice. Add any spices, if you wish, top off with another sprinkle of salt, and add enough lemon juice to completely submerge the lemons.

Shake the jar every day or two to evenly distribute juice and salt. As lemons soften, add a few more.

Your lemons will be ready in 3 to 4 weeks. They're very salty: You may want to rinse them before using, and taste before adding more salt to a dish.

I've been assured the jar never needs refrigeration, but I stick it in the fridge after opening it and try to use them up within 6 to 8 months.

Preserved lemons are perfect for Persimmon and Fennel Salad

A feast for the new year

We just finished cleaning up and decorating our home this weekend to usher in the Year of the Water Dragon, which kicks off Monday.

I didn't mark Lunar New Year while growing up in New England, but it's an eagerly anticipated holiday for my sons. It's such a joyful celebration — and food, of course, is part of the fun.

A little lion

We've done a little tidying up, set out fresh flowers and mandarin oranges, and hung up our decorations. For New Year's, we'll enjoy a modest feast with a nod to traditional dishes. The start of the new year snuck up on me, however, so we'll be taking advantage of the fact that this is the year of the creative, independent, and calm water dragon, and make do the best we can (without braving the busy Asian market just before the holiday!).

I'll be making long noodles — spaghetti, this year! — to celebrate long life. We just finished off the last of our homemade dumplings from the freezer, so we'll get by with ravioli for our "little purses." And I might make this stir-fried lettuce for a little more good luck. We'll make more traditional fare before the holiday ends. Read on for a few more ways to celebrate:

Wrapping dumplings

• Make dumplings. The first few may come out a bit wonky, but you'll soon get the hang of these delicious little purses. Kids enjoy making them too — just be sure the edges are well sealed so they don't split open during cooking. To freeze, set the dumplings on a silicone baking mat or parchment, then store them in a freezer bag for a quick meal later. My kids love to find dumplings in their lunch box.
  



Beautifully marbled tea eggs

Prepare tea eggs. Oh, I love these! These are fun to make, lovely to look at, and delicious to eat. Like dumplings, they're perfect for a lunch box. It's an easy recipe to do with kids too.

Have a popiah party. Like dumplings, these Taiwanese crepes symbolize prosperity and good fortune — and are another way to involve kids.

Baked rice cake

Bake sweet rice cake. You'll need glutinous rice flour for this, but it's worth seeking out (try an Asian market) for this slightly lighter and easier take on the traditional sweet.

More ways to celebrate: Wear new clothes, get a hair cut, and set off party poppers in lieu of firecrackers! And don't forget to give the kids red envelopes with crisp dollar bills inside.

To learn a little more about the holiday, visit Wikipedia. And for more inspiration in the kitchen, check out this feature at Epicurious.

May the Year of the Water Dragon bring you and your family good fortune!

Cocoa and Cinnamon Biscotti

My 7-year-old and I were extremely bored last Monday. It was Martin Luther King Jr. Day and we were trying to find something else to do with our free time at home, apart of dreaming about traveling to snowy places.

That's when Darienne's latest series of posts and somehow one chapter of An Everlasting Meal, by Tamar Adler, started to act as a magic potion on my motivation.

We headed to the kitchen and I invited my son to make an experiment. At this point I have to add some background to the story: Science is highly appreciated here and anything related to mixing things and heating them to see what happens is welcome, especially by the older kid.

So he announced he wanted to try to bake a "I have a dream kind of cake" to celebrate the reason for the school day off. We started putting ingredients on the dining table and he helped choose his favorites: cocoa, cinnamon and vanilla. He asked me what to do. I declared that we would bake with no recipe, using our intuition and mixing things and adjusting the quantities. While I would add the ingredients, he would take notes. Then he mixed all the liquid ingredients with Mr. Whisk — a very lovely kitchen tool (in the photo).

Flour, eggs, milk, canola oil, baking powder, cocoa, cinnamon, vanilla and chocolate chips were added gradually. We both stirred everything with the help of a vintage wooden spoon as we dared to make an "old times" cake, with no electricity wasted. The batter was looking beautiful and uniform, ready to go and be baked. He decided to include a secret ingredient, so to make the recipe unique. We did.

After 40 minutes the cake was ready — perfect taste and not so perfect texture — too dense. But the boy didn't care about the texture and enjoyed a big slice of it with a tall glass of milk. After one day of sitting on the countertop I just decided to give it a second chance. I sliced it with a sharp knife, and baked the sliced cake for about one hour. That's how these wonderful biscottis were born! And they made me think if somewhere in Italy biscottis were created like this — by chance. Or if it was just a way of giving a longer life to a once-upon-a-time cake.

Cocoa Cinnamon Biscotti

I see this recipe as a reference and a "freedom license" to create something out of it. For sure we will revisit it sometime to achieve the texture I would love to have. Darienne had a sample and called the biscotti a cross in between biscotti and brownies. 

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/3 cup cocoa
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup chocolate chips
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 eggs
1/4 cup canola oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/4 cup milk
1 tablespoon your secret ingredient

Preheat oven to 350F. Mix all dried in a bowl. In another bowl whisk all liquid ingredients. Pour liquid into dry ingredients and stir with a wooden spoon. When blended, add chocolate chips and fold them to the batter. Transfer mix to a 9-x-13-inch cake pan and bake for about 35 minutes. When cold, slice it and bake the slices for about 30 more minutes at 375 F.