Preserving lemons while trying to get over life lemons

Did you catch 60 Minutes last night? How brave is Imran Khan? When I was a younger, I remember watching him play cricket. I enjoy watching cricket. 

When I was younger I remember having crushes on all sorts of different cricketers, him being one. So handsome and worldly.

This story made me appreciate our country. It made me appreciate the freedom my children have to an education. The security of a safe classroom and school.

So confronting to watch the images of bloodied classrooms and school bombings. God bless him in his plight to save his country from the terrors of the Taliban. I cannot see him being assassinated without an uproar from the entire nation, let alone the world.

I usually don't like to watch 60 minutes and shows like it. Too much real, and mostly the bad stuff. I am way too sensitive, and sometimes would rather not know.

I makes the life lemons that get thrown my way sometimes seem trivial.

I did have a bowl full of real lemons in my kitchen I had to use up. I still have an open jar of lemon curd in the fridge which I dip into sometimes with a teaspoon.

I preserved these lemons. Salt, lemons and a cut finger. Was fun.

I am not even sure how I am going to use them, in couscous maybe?

The recipe is on the SAXA cooking salt packet. It's basically quartering 10 lemons and juicing two more. Rub salt on the lemons and then squash them into jars with the leftover of a cup of salt, the juice and some pepper and bay leaves.

The bottom shelf in my pantry is full of preserves. As if I needed to add to it. I need to start giving stuff away.

I keep a cooking salt pig on my kitchen bench. My brother in law even used it instead of sugar in his coffee one time. I dunno how he managed to do that, considering it is no where near the kettle, where the actual sugar is. The salt pig is on a tray where the salt and pepper mills, olive oil and garlic lives.

It would have been funny if it wasn't so dumb.

See. No where near the sugar.

An InLinkz Link-up

Crostoli

What do you do with leftover pasta dough? We make crustoli. Well, we do now. 

I remember these from my childhood, Mum used to make them quite a bit. I had no idea how until recently, I mentioned to her I had some spare dough after making ravioli. You could make crostoli, she said, it's just made with flour and egg anyway.

Mum never made homemade pasta, but she had a lot of Italian friends who probably let her in on how to make crostoli. Us kids loved them and they never lasted long, there was five of us! 

It's very simple, there are lots of involved recipes on the net, and you could go looking. I just used my leftover pasta dough, which is 100 grams of flour to 1 whole egg and mixed to a dough. 

For the amount of pasta in the picture, enough for a lasagne, and two strips on the bench,  I used 300 grams and 3 eggs, a pinch of salt and a bit of olive oil if it is a bit dry coming together. Knead until smooth and let it sit for about 20 minutes.

Roll the dough in the pasta machine, then cut into about 15 cm lengths and cut small slits along the middle of the strip.

Deep fry* until lightly golden, drain on paper, then dust with icing sugar. 

Bobs your uncle (fanny's your aunt). 

If I made it again, I would maybe not machine the dough so thin(mine were the thinnest setting), I was making lasagne sheets. 

*When I say deep fry, I used a deep fry pan with about a centimetre of two of oil in it.