Am suddenly immensely hungry. Wish I could come eat at your house.

I'm going to try out that combo. Though it's got to have a different kind of lemon, since I don't do sodium. (Which complicates life considerably, but not doing sodium also improves life considerably, so there I be.)

Love, C.

I don't do sodium either. Nor beef in large quantities. Could this be done with either pork or chicken?

Three years ago I made my own preserved lemons using this recipe on Epicurious. I am lazy: I didn't soak the lemons in advance and most days I forgot to shake the jar. I had to squeeze quite a few extra lemons to make sure there was enough juice to cover everything. It was, perhaps, rather larger a batch than necessary based on the fact that we are still working our way through them.

Occasionally I try store-bought preserved lemons to compare against my own as a sanity check. They look better (mine now have a dull brownish-yellow peel) but general consensus is that mine have a better and stronger flavour. I usually use a quarter of a lemon per person in salad recipes.

If you get a chance and you 'do sodium', I recommend making these yourself.

(got curious first ...
anti-oxidant F300 seems to be ascorbic acid.)

The salad sounds wonderful (from here in once-more-baking southern CA).

I've been making chicken lately with what I call a no-brainer recipe:

- One three-pound bag frozen chicken breast
- A bunch of canola oil
- One medium onion
- Four cloves garlic
- Salt to taste.

Dump the chicken into a pan with a quarter-inch canola oil; bake until thawed. Slice the onion, halve the garlic, toss it all in, cut the chicken into bite-sized pieces, bake some more.

Total time invested: ten minutes, feeds four hungry no-carb people twice, with a bit for the dog (removed before adding the onions.) The oil is for no-carb calories.

It's less foodie-oriented than your recipe, Teresa, but it sure is nice having chicken ready to eat whenever I want it. This is really good with cauliflower and curry, or with broccoli. We eat a lot of cauliflower and broccoli, and long for the day when we can start eating potatoes again. Or yautía.

That sounds wonderful--I like the copy editor-recipe-detailing. You can make preserved lemons yourself and they are vastly better than the most of the commercial ones. Lemons+ lemon juice to cover, with the lemons quartered but not cut through - so that the quartered pieces remain in one whole piece. Put a stick of cinnamon, a few cloves and whatever else strikes your fancy - maybe some garlic, Kosher salt in a glass jar. It takes a few weeks to cure and they are to die for, with a great and sweet perfume. This is from memory but it came from Paula Wolfert's great Moroccan cooking book, Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco.

Most of that recipe sounds amazing. I'll have to try to adapt a veggie version. Tempeh, maybe? It would take a lot--or a serious conversion of amounts.

I just have to thank you for the use of "stet" in the context of a recipe. I can't stop giggling about it, and that is a very good thing.

I, too, am tempted to develop a vegetarian version of this, but was thinking of substituting seitan instead.

P.

Fragano @3:: Could this be done with either pork or chicken?
I'm imagining here, but I think salmon, especially grilled, would pull this dish off beautifully if you wanted to substitute out the beef.

Michael Roberts @6::
Sounds like a great base for any chicken recipe! One masterful secret I picked up from a wonderful Indian chef - try marinating chicken with malt vinegar to give it a subtle but great flavor boost. I splash by eye so I'm not sure what the exact amount would be for 3 lbs of chicken, maybe start with 1/3-1/2 cup and bump up from there.

Oh, and the four cloves of garlic: that's per chicken breast, right?? :)

Jason B @8::
For a vegetarian spin, I'm thinking a combination of grilled tempeh cubes and portabello strips might be good. I'd use the tempeh for the texture and the mushroom for the deeper meat approximate flavor.

Lance Weber (10):
Oh, and the four cloves of garlic: that's per chicken breast, right?? :)

Garlic is such a subtle spice, that's why you have to use so much of it.

(Pam: is that David's line, yours, or some other person's entirely?)

This must be the day for "what the heck do I do with that?" With me, it was three leftover roasted ears of corn and two crabcakes found in the back of the fridge. Ended up making a sort of corn and crab stew with onions, garlic, cherry tomatoes, multicolored peppers (thus cleaning out the leftover veggie bin), and a splash of sherry. Quite tasty actually, more than I deserved with the improvisational approach.

Lance - marinating obviates the ease-of-use mandate inherent in our lifestyle, unfortunately. We do manage to soak legumes, but soaking the chicken? The central point of my method is "thaw in the oven!" Very important.

Just had this chicken now, along with provolone and muenster, and almond-flour cheese bread. Tasty!

Yum. Sounds lovely, and is making me crave larb or yum nuer/nua (however your local Thai friends transliterate the word for beef).

Thanks for sharing. And reminding me that I need to try preserving lemons again. My last two times have not turned out so well. But I'm going to keep on trying.

Watch out. Next thing you know this'll turn up as a Cindy McCain Recipe.

There's a Cambodian dish called Loc Lac that's close to this, beef in a basil and lime sauce. It's extremely delicious.

I seem to recall that Claudia Roden has a recipe for preserved/pickled lemons that involves freezing lemon wedges first, making it faster and easier. It should be in A Book of Middle Eastern Food.

Preserved lemons are easy to do, and if you forget to move them around every day during the curing process, it doesn't make much difference. Obviously they cure a little more evenly if you do.

My favorite version uses bay leaves and cardamom layered in with the lemons and salt.

Question: Are the sun-dried tomatoes the "dry" sort (e.g., sold in cellophane-ish bags) or the kind in jars packed with olive oil? If the latter, might it be beneficial to the salad to use some of the sun-dried tomato oil with the olive oil in the dressing?

I'm too hungry now. Which is what I get for checking the Fluorosphere almost as soon as I get up, instead of hitting the kitchen first...

@Teresa: Fresh, uncooked tomatoes? Is the scare over or do you have a trustworthy source?

It also occurred to me (while listening to the tomato story on The NewsHour) that back in the home country, my people have used night soil to fertilize their crops for possibly thousands of years. Why were e. coli and the like not regular scourges? Then I realized that Chinese salads were invented in California around the time of Jimmy Carter. Stir frying for the win! Not that it won't keep me from trying out the recipe myself. Sounds yummy.

John Houghton at #11 -- You'll have gotten the remark about garlic's being a subtle spice from David, certainly. He and Steve Brust had a lot of remarks about garlic and onion in common in the years all of us lived in Minneapolis, but I think that one is David's.

Unless the garlic is to be consumed raw, I always double or triple the amount called for in a recipe. I go through four heads of garlic a week, when I'm cooking. Yum.

P.

I am laughing because all of us want to change the ingredients, starting with me. :) Classic in terms of providing a recipe, then users don't follow it, and wonder why their end result isn't the same.

Fragano -- It isn't very much beef, so once in a while you can do it. That's one reason this receipe is so appealing. I happen to have beef filet in the freezer.

Love, C.

meteorplum, #20, many sources of tomatoes have been declared safe and the stores are buying from those sources.

I made this recipe last night and it was awesome, this is definitely a keeper Teresa!

I did end up tweaking it slightly, by substituting marinated grilled chicken for the beef, fresh limes for the preserved lemon, cilantro for the basil, jalapeno for the bell peppers, grilled sweet corn for the sun-dried tomato, and a chipotle ranch dressing for the balsamic vinegar, but I think the tastes and textures must be pretty close to the your original. I'd definitely make it again!

(Inspired by Constance :)

Re garlic: you know in that scene in _Last Man Standing_ (yeah, OK, but I liked it), where Bruce Willis eats with the Italian mob, and the guy says, "What? You don't like my mother's cooking!?", and Bruce Willis says, "(coff) Yeah, I like garlic."? I start getting hungry when I think of that scene. 'Cause I really like garlic.

When I made my chicken yesterday, just because garlic is so subtle, I put in five cloves.

I had an acquaintance back in my contract days at Eli Lilly, young guy fresh out of college. He wanted to cook spaghetti, and got a recipe, but didn't know what a "clove" of garlic was. Assuming it meant the purchased unit (and hey, why not?) he made some ... really spicy spaghetti.

#24 ::: Lance Weber

O, you made me laugh! Thank you. I've gotten a wee bit depressed over the events of this last weekend, which included bad news on several fronts simultaneously.

Your version sounds delicious too.

Love, C.