Once you discover how easy it is to make your own preserved lemons, you’ll then be on a mission to find ways to use them. We have two recipes in one here: both use garlic, parsley and preserved lemon, and one adds in dried mushrooms and cashew cream to fill out the flavour. You could also use normal dairy cream, and it would probably be delicious.
The first is perfect for a light appetiser. The other, the one with the mushrooms and cream, is richer and is better as a small first course.
When we did the taste test, the verdict was that the mushrooms and cream intensified the lemon flavour, but in the nicest possible way. I personally prefer the plainer version, so we take my serve out before adding the mushrooms and cream when making it for the family.
Both versions are going with me to Fiesta Friday, with Angie and her friends, Margy @La Petite Casserole and Sylvia @Superfoodista. Everyone there seems to have different tastes, so maybe you all can tell me which you like more?
Update: Angie and her hosts like it so much, they decided to give it a special place in Fiesta Friday feature-dom!
Garlic and preserved lemon with tagliatelle
Ingredients
- 4-6 cloves of garlic
- 2 slices of preserved lemon (about ¼ of the lemon)
- water and a little olive oil
- 1-2 tablespoons of parsley
- 2 balls of tagliatelle
- optional: dried mushroom and cashew cream (or dairy cream) (see notes)
Before you start
If you are going to use dried mushroom, soak it in a small bowl of boiling water before you even start the pasta. Dried mushrooms take about 15-30 minutes to soften, so you need to give yourself enough time.
Directions
- Boil the tagliatelle in heavily salted water until it’s al dente. Drain well when it’s done and set aside.
- While the pasta is cooking, prepare the sauce as follows:
- Wash the preserved lemon, discarding the pulp (you can keep some of it if you want to intensify the flavour, but most people will find that a bit salty).
- Chop the garlic and preserved lemon very finely, then mix them with a little olive oil and a tablespoon or two of water in a bowl. Cover the bowl and microwave it on medium for about 3 minutes. Check it: can you mash the garlic yet? If yes, then go to the next step. If you can’t, then microwave for another 2 minutes and check again.
- Remove the bowl from the microwave and mash the garlic and lemon into a fine pulp. (Don’t expect a fine puree—you’d be mashing a lot time for that.)
- Tip this into a saucepan, add a little extra water, and simmer for a few minutes. This step develops the flavours more than you can in a microwave. Don’t ask me why, it just does.
- Optional: The dried mushroom should be well soaked and soft by now. Chop it finely and stir it into the sauce with the cream (cashew or dairy). Simmer this for about 5 minutes, stirring frequently, until the mushrooms have cooked through. If you need extra liquid, use the water from soaking the mushrooms. it’ll give your sauce a really rich, mushroomy flavour.
- Tip the drained pasta into a large bowl and mix with the garlic and lemon sauce.
- Stir in some fresh chopped parsley and serve immediately.
Notes
You can sidestep the microwave by roasting the garlic in an oven first, but that would add an hour to the whole process, and force you to heat up your kitchen just for some garlic! No thanks. But if you do decide a hot kitchen and roasted garlic are your thing, you can just mix the (roasted) garlic pulp and chopped (mashed) lemon in the saucepan and proceed from there.
Dried mushrooms: we use a sixth of a large saffron milkcap mushroom from our mushrooming adventure (the mushrooms are cut into halves, then each half cut into thirds to dry). I’m sorry, but I can’t give accurate amounts. You’ll have to experiment and see what you like.
Cashew cream is a good alternative to normal dairy cream. To make it, soak the cashews in some hot water for a few hours (pour the water on and go and do something else for a while), then pour the cashews into a blender. Whiz it, and add as much of the soaking water as you need to get the consistency you want.
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Oh, this looks so good!
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Thank you – it is.
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I love how you made a pasta dish as a light appetizer. I usually just jump from pasta to entree. Thanks for sharing such a beautiful dish, and happy Fiesta Friday!
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Thank you. Enjoy your Friday and weekend.
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yummy and eaasy, a great dish thank you x
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Thanks for dropping by. Enjoy the party.
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🙂
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Yum! I have dried mushrooms in my pantry and this is the perfect recipe to use them! Thanks!
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That’s great. Let me know how you go – will you bother roasting the garlic? I’m told it does add more than just a longer cooking time.
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I love pasta thanks for bringing it to the party!
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Here you go – have some more.
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Being Italian makes me a fan of pasta, especially tagliatelle. Since you’ve asked, I’ll tell you that I appreciate more pasta without cream, so I’m going to vote the first version of your recipes, simpler and very very particular! Even though… I love mushrooms too!!! Thanks a lot for bringing both recipes to FF!
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Aha – someone who agrees with me. So glad to have cream-free friends to enjoy food with (even if the ‘cream’ isn’t really cream at all).
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Mmm! I never thought of using preserved lemons in a pasta dish, but this intrigues me! I just happen to have some P. lemons in my fridge and I think I will try it! Thanks so much for bringing this delightful dish! 😀
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Thank you for your enthusiasm. I’ll be interested to see what you think: it’s a bit of an unusual but delicious flavour.
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thanks for the tip on cashew cream.. dairy doesn’t suit me so am going to try that for sure!
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It’s something we’ve discovered only in the past year or so – it really is a better substitute. All you need is a good blender/processor. Please do let me know how you go.
That said, I’ve never tried it in a pastry!
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Hmmm will do!
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This looks amazing!
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Thank you. It tastes pretty good too.
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Oh yum! Both recipes sound absolutely delicious! Hm, can I have both of them?? 😉 Thanks so much for bringing these great creations to Fiesta Friday, I hope you enjoyed the party as we did. hugs, Sylvia
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Thank you so much. It was a great party this week, wasn’t it.
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This sounds wonderful! I’m off to check out the post on preserving lemons now 🙂
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Have fun – they’re really good (even two years later!).
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This looks delicious! I love preserved lemons and it sounds so good with the cashew cream! Yum!
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Oh good. Thanks for dropping by.
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I do like the sound of this very much. Unusual but delicious! Will give it a try, but first I need to preserve some lemons. 🙂
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Thank you. It is unusual, but very tasty.
We did our lemons last week – enough for Christmas gifts and enough for our own use for net year. The lemon tree owners have asked for more, so I’ll be preserving again in the next few days.
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Thank you so much for the special mention. I really hope you enjoy this dish once you do get to making it.
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A very different recipe. I have to preserve some lemons asap. 🙂
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Your recipe looks delicious – I just made some preserved lemons for the first time in a shrimp dish 🙂
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Thank you. Preserved lemons go well with fish – did you like your result? I always find I need nothing like the amount the recipes suggest.
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I made a lemon aioli to go with the shrimp and I cut back on the preserved lemon. I love the taste of lemon but not too much so I am always careful as to how much I add 🙂
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Sounds really good.
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