In Good Taste #: 91 Preserved lemon soda

A super-refreshing, salty-sweet drink for summer; visiting a wasabi farm; hot pots and French films

Well, hello there! How are you?

Good I hope.

(Not up for the chitchat? Completely get it. Click the email title to go to a web-based version then jump straight to the recipe or Cultural Fun.)

I feel incredibly lucky. I’ve had an absolute gem of a week.

In a bid not to come across as self-satisfied, I will confine its details to bullet points:

• Last Thursday my father and I went to an event at Heal’s: part of London Craft Week it featured the shop’s head buyer, Sabina Miller, and furniture designers from Fritz Hansen, Artek, SCP and Case in a very interesting conversation about balancing heritage with forward-looking design. There are no actual Heals involved in the running of Heal’s anymore (it was sold to Terrence Conran in 1983 and has been through various buyouts since) but we like to see what they’re up to and it was nice of them to invite us.

• Three IGT readers joined me on Saturday to gather elderflowers in Finsbury Park and we had a lovely time wandering up the Parkland Walk, sniffing stuff and chatting all things food and drink. Still plenty of elderflowers out there if you fancy making some “Champagne” or mead.

  

• I spent Monday in Wilbarston, a village near Market Harborough where my friend Marie lives, doing a raku course at her local pottery studio. Raku involves opening the kiln whilst your pots are still hot so it was slightly adrenaline-fuelled. I was less worried about getting burned as I grabbed my 900°C pot with three-foot-long tongs and more scared I was going to drop it. We did three different techniques and I was pretty pleased how all of them came out.

  

  

• And - last in this smug litany - on Tuesday I went to Micheldever where The Wasabi Company has their farm. It was a trip organised by the Guild of Food Writers and fascinating to hear how Jon Old reappropriated his family farm’s disused watercress beds to grow another moisture-loving crop previously only available on import. We walked the wasabi beds and were even allowed to harvest our own rhizomes to take home. I’m going to write much more about this trip, what I learned and the recipes it inspired in a future issue so make sure you’re subscribed.

  

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Recipe: Preserved lemon soda

Males approximately 200ml

The weather seems to have taken a bit of a turn for the grey, just like last time I attempted to give you a hot weather recipe using preserved lemons. Ah well. Just bookmark it and come back when the sun’s out again.

I’d been musing on preserved lemon soft drinks for a while but got the boost I needed to make it happen from Samin Nosrat and Hrishikesh Hirway on the latest episode of Home Cooking which is my absolute favourite podcast. Samin and Hrishi are so full of good and do-able suggestions (all documented on the website) but also so delightful to spend time with. Of all my parasocial podcast relationships, this is the deepest and most obsessive. In my mind we are all cookie-swapping best friends and Samin groans with goodnatured despair at my puns the way she groans at Hrishi’s.

Having a salty element to a refreshing drink is nothing new. It’s a staple in many hot countries since it’s good to replace the salt the body loses when sweating (in researching this recipe I discovered Vietmanese Chanh Muối salted lemons and the lemonade made from their brine which I have earmarked for further investigation). I remember going to New York to visit relatives when I was - I think - eight years old. It was our family’s first trip abroad and, knowing New York in the summer was going to be very hot and humid, my mother got obsessed with the idea of salt replacement and made us drink pickle brine.

These days I would happily knock back a swig of pickle brine but at the time I was horrified. This lemonade is a slightly more mainstream alternative.

Ingredients

• 100g preserved lemon purée

• 100g sugar

• 100ml water

• sparkling water and ice to serve

Method

1. Make a syrup. Put the preserved lemon purée, sugar and water in a small saucepan and bring to the boil. Turn down the heat and simmer for a couple of minutes. You just want to warm the lemon enough so it softens and blends well.

2. Blend. Transfer the mixture to a blender whilst still warm and blend for about five minutes until smooth with no visible lumps of lemon peel. Transfer to a bottle and allow to cool.

3. Store or serve. Serve over ice, diluted with fizzy water at approximately 1 part lemon to 4 or 5 parts water. Or to taste. Alternatively store in the fridge for up to a week until things are suitably sunny.

Notes (If Ifs And Ands Were Pots And Pans…)

• If keeping the probiotics in the lemons is important to you, you could just blend the preserved lemon with the sugar. But heating it gives a smoother texture.

• Samin used agave syrup and that would work too if you have it. Honey is also a possibility but the combination with lemon is too cold-and-flu for me to enjoy in summer.

• I’ll be honest with you. Owning a SodaStream isn’t nearly as much fun as I thought it would be as a child in the 80s. But it does mean I can make this without lugging home fizzy water from the shop. You could always use still. Or even spritzify the thing, mixing half sparkling wine with half water.

• The preserved lemons have plenty of zine and this isn;t lacking sharpness but, if you want more, replace up to have of the water int he pan with lemon juice.

• Garnish with mint, lemon balm or basil. Or try blending these into the syrup. A few drops of orange blossom water or vanilla essence work beautifully too.

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Cultural Fun

James and I went to see The Marching Band (En Fanfare in its original French) and really, really liked it. The easiest way to describe it is as a sort of Gallic Brassed Off, and it features a similar small, working class town with a dying industry, but the class commentary feels both wider and more personal.

When classical conductor Thibaut (Benjamin Lavernhe) finds out he has leukemia and needs a bone marrow transplant he also finds out that he’s adopted and has a long-lost brother. When Thibaut was adopted into a privileged, middle-class able to support his musical gift, Jimmy (Pierre Lottin) ended up in a poor but loving home. He works in a canteen and his musical talent is confined by circumstance to a shonky local brass band. What could he have been with a different start in life?

It’s sad funny and thoughtful and properly zips along. If you don’t mind subtitles I really recommend it.

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Bye! See you next week!

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