Burnt lemons

"The juice will enhance almost anything you can squeeze it over."

Nigel Slater

Scorched, burnt, charred, grilled, fried, roasted - take your pick, but applying lemons to heat until they char, even burn is a very fashionable thing to do. I have tried to find out where and when and by who this all started, but have found nothing. So have we been grilling lemons over fire since caveman times, or is it something that somebody somewhere dreamt up, or accidentally did in recent times? I have no idea. Suffice to say it's trendy.

So much so that when I went searching on Google for burnt lemons, the first sites that came up were all 'professional' - either professional publications or professional chefs and bloggers.

Which was very unlike yesterday's search for celery and pasta - all those results were 'non-professionals'. The 'professionals' except for Ottolenghi were just not into celery and pasta - which, of course, might have been a sign that it wasn't really a good thing. Maybe I should have gone with quiche.

Nevertheless I did give it a good hot go, combining a few things I had found in my net browsing. However, like Diane of Another Year in Recipes I perhaps was not adventurous enough. David asked for ham, so I put aside the sausage idea, which had rather tempted me I have to say. But I guess I didn't put in a lot of ham, and it was barely noticed. Besides I think bacon might have been better - lots - crisped and put on top. In fact something crunchy on top would have probably improved it no end. I chickened out of Ottolenghi's recipe but I did add a few capers, which I'm still not sure about. And even though it looked like a mountain of celery - and leeks - and a couple of sliced asparagus as well - yes I used some of my leeks - they almost vanished in the finished dish. I chose orecchiette as my pasta and, as usual, cooked too much which rather diminished the impact - if there was one - of the sauce, which was finished with some cream, and some pasta water, lemon juice and zest. Plus the inevitable sprinkling of lots of chopped parsley. I should have added some chilli I think. Now it was not at all awful, but just not that exciting. As Diane said:

"I’d have to say the dish tasted about the way it looked – pale, plain, mild, simple."

Not that there is anything wrong with that. Suffice to say it needed lots of Parmesan. An idea that shouldn't really be abandoned, but needs improving.

But back to burnt lemons - maybe I should have charred my lemon. The impetus for this post is one of those little things at the beginning of Nigel Slater's A Cook's Book. It's just a short paragraph which includes my opening quote and begins with: "The difference a scorched lemon - its juice, hot, sweet, smoky, sour - can make to a grilled aubergine is extraordinary." Praise indeed, but interestingly there is not a single recipe in the book that includes burnt lemons in the title. Maybe there is a sprinkle of one here and there, but they certainly don't show up in the index. Eventually I did find this, however - Burnt lemon and thyme dip which he served with focaccia. A Cook's Book is his most recent book, so maybe he has only recently discoverd the virtues of charring lemons and there will be more to come. In the meantime next time you char eggplant - and maybe other vegetables too, for a mezze platter, sprinkle them with charred lemon juice. They say Meyer lemons are even better than the usual ones.

You can charr your lemons to a greater or lesser degree of course. I have to say that sometimes they look a touch too burnt for purpose to me - as in this Grilled lemonade from Oh So Delicioso. I don't think I would be putting the lemons in the finished drink, but then maybe that is not the intention. Maybe you infuse them and then strain them out. There were other similar recipes for lemonade, but just to demonstrate the 'too much charring for me' thing I also found this Charred lemon Margarita on a website called Drinking with Chickens, which to my mind looks like imbibing bits of charcoal with your drink. Not tempting at all.

There were actually rather a lot of drinks that used charred or burnt lemons. Below is just one of the many martinis that I saw - A (keto) charred lemon drop martini from Bon Appeteach. There was also a Charred-lemon gin sparkler from Autumn Giles/Serious Eats, which could be rather tempting. And I'm sure there is a plethora of cocktails that use charred lemons in some form or another.

You can burn, char or scorch your lemons in a number of different ways - on a barbecue, on a griddle, under a grill, over an open flame though how you would hold them I'm not sure. With tongs I suppose. Maybe on a skewer. They can be baked, and of course, fried - as the rather beautiful looking slices at the top of the page are. They are from The Mediterranean Dish site, where the author says that she often sprinkles them with sumac as well. She also says of the oil in which they are fried:

"As an added bonus, you’re left with lemon-infused oil. Use as a finishing oil for salads and dips. Or, soak it up with a nice piece of toasted focaccia bread and treat yourself to a snack before dinner. " The Mediterranean Dish

As pretty as the lemons themselves look, - as long as you don't overdo the charring - it's really the juice that you are after because:

"By exposing the lemon to heat and flame, the acids mellow, the fruit sweetens and the flavor of the juice gets a rich, complex taste." Stacey Hawkins

And mostly the juice is used in any other way that you might use lemon juice, and if you are grilling something lemony then as Molly Watson on The Spruce Eats site says: "why not throw the lemon on the grill too?"

So let's work our way through a menu because burnt lemons feature in every part of the menu. First the starters - another dip - Burnt lemon spread/Chef Izhar Sa'ar; Charred lemon shallot chutney - Soa Davies/Bon Appétit; Grilled lemon and herb olives - Sylvia Colloca/delicious. And perhaps I'll add in here Charred lemon marmalade from Chef Ryan Moore, which is really more of a dressing than an actual marmalade that you might eat on toast. It's shown here with haloumi and I have to say that this might well have been near the top of my list of things to try. Although that said I guess you could make marmalade with charred citrus.

Vegetable sides - and here we discover that once again Ottolenghi has plunged right in there - and indeed there is a rather lovely short video on Facebook of him making a delectable looking dish of Charred peas with lemon, miso and Parmesan in his new city garden which has been established to feed his restaurants and delis. He also has Asparagus with labneh, brown butter and charred lemon. Molly Baz of Bon Appétit offers Sweet potatoes with charred lemons and crunchies

On to the mains and chicken seems to be the universal star here, though you would think that fish would have been the more obvious candidate. Chicken with burnt lemons and haloumi from Donna Hay; Charred lemon chicken/Seasons and Suppers; Charred lemon chicken/Mob and two risottos - Charred lemon risotto - Sohla El-Waylly/The Happy Foodie, which doesn't look that tempting but lots of people mention it, so it probably tastes a whole lot better than it looks, and 'Nduja risotto with burnt lemon honey/delicious. UK

So good in dessert as well and once again Ottolenghi stars with his Lemon-labneh possets with meringue and burnt lemon powder as published in The New York Times and his Upside-down lemon pudding with lemon-maple butter. Sam Parish also makes a kind of cake/pudding - Burnt lemon and rosemary polenta cake

I'm cooking chicken tonight and haven't quite decided what to do with it. Maybe I should try to incorporate burnt lemons into it. I don't have haloumi so can't follow Donna Hay's recipe, although I could try a tray- bake of some kind.

And yes I know Ottolenghi features a lot again. Honestly I try not to do this but he pops up every time with something fascinating. And late in the day, just as I was going to finish this post, I have discovered that he actually does something else with burning lemons - burnt lemon peel - baked in the oven on high heat, cooled and then stored for later use - mostly to sprinkle over stuff like his asparagus above, or the labneh possets. I'm guessing the pieces could just be crunched and sprinkled as well. It features as one of his 'extra good things' in the OTK book of the same name.

Maybe I should try frying a few slices in oil for my chicken dinner tonight.

POSTSCRIPT

September 14 in years gone by

2023 - Sainte Ménéhoulde

2022 - Nothing

2021 - I'm missing cake - well dessert really

2020 - Life. Be in it.

2019 - Nothing

2018 - Truite aux amandes

2017 - Sunflowers

2016 - Radicchio