Derek Hanson: I am Derek Hanson, I am the chef Nutshell restaurant in Portland Oregon, and we are cooking for everydaydish.tv. Today we’re going to be making a Preserved Lemon Vinaigrette. This is a really simple vinaigrette that you can keep in your fridge and put it on any thing, obviously salads; it also goes well with braised vegetables, fennel, things like that. And it’s incredibly simple to make and it will keep in your fridge for a long time. So first let’s talk about preserved lemons. Here we have two different kinds of lemons, this is your traditional lemon that you just find in the grocery store, and then this is a Meyer lemon from California, a Meyer lemon is a cross between a lemon and a tangerine. So this is actually a sweeter, more -- it kind of taste like lemonade because it has a sweet undertone, which bounces out the sour aspects of lemons.
So what we do with both kinds of preserved lemons is you cut a lemon in half, you take out the seeds and then you cover it with salt, it’s a lot of salt to a little bit of lemon. So what we do is we would just take a jar and layer the salt with lemon. So what we have here is a quarter of a lemon with the seeds cut out of the center, cover it in salt and it sits in the salt for a month if not longer, you can keep them in the salt for up to 6 months. I would recommend keeping the lemons in the fridge so that they kind of preserve themselves slowly. So what we’re going to do after it comes out of the salt, you can either rinse the salt off or just leave it on there, it actually has a really nice kind of lemon salt flavor if you will. Now the only part that yu actually from a preserved lemon is the zest or the skin. Everything else you want to discard.
So this, you don’t really want to eat, that’s just there for the preservation process. You want to shave off as much of that as possible, it’s a little tricky and you got to watch your fingers a little bit but try and get as much white pith off as possible, that has a really bitter flavor to it. So what we are left with is just the zest. And then we’re just going to chop it up, and this will go into our vinaigrette. Once again, you can rinse off the salt or leave the salt on there as oppose to adding salt at the end. What we have here are some shallots macerating in vinegar. A shallot is a french onion or a variety of onion that grows in Provins, they are tiny, they have a more delicate flavor, they have a more of a pink flesh, and they are kind of a staple in French cuisine. So what you do is you’re just taking the onion, alright, alright excuse me, the shallot, dice it up and cover it with vinegar.
This is Muscoda vinegar; Muscoda vinegar is derived from Muscoda wine, which grows in Southwestern France. It’s a sweet wine, so this is actually more of a sweet vinegar. If you can’t find Muscoda vinegar, you can use champagne vinegar or white vinegar and just add a little bit of sugar to sweeten it up. So you dice up the shallot, cover it in vinegar, let it set for about 15 minutes and you’re going to notice how it gets a real pink kind of color to it, because the acid pours out their pink color in a shallot. So what we’re going to do is we’re just going to take some of this and combine it with our lemon zest. And then we’ll simply add some really nice olive oil. This is Penn green olive oil, you can use any sort of extra virgin olive oil, and you don’t want to add too much because you really want a nice flavor from the lemon to come through, but all you’re doing by adding oil is just rounding off that sharp lemon flavor. And then that’s it, you can make as much as you want or as little as you want.
And then this will keep really well in the fridge. So what we are going to do with it is we’re just going to drizzle it over some really beautiful rugula, this comes from a local farm here in Portland called Dancing Roots Farm, this was in the ground yesterday morning. We can get it at the Farmers Market or if you can, really try and find the best freshest greens that you can, ideally you would grow your own greens. Now what we are going to do is we are just going to drizzle it over the top. And I think you'll be surprised as to how fresh and delicious it is because we are just using very simple ingredients and very simple technique. This recipe can be found at everydaydish.tv. And once again play around with the recipe and keep it as long as you can and try it on a bunch of different things.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services