Charlotte wrote about preserved lemon recipes:

> Also, I'd be interested in the Zuni recipe. I have a lemon tree, so I
> have preserved lemons :-).

I just happen to have that recipe handy:

Preserved Lemon-Caper Butter (from _The Zuni Cafe Cookbook_)

"The one butter sauce I have not abandoned for salsa or vinaigrette.
Unapologetically rich, but pungent and chunky with bits of fragrant citrus.
Serve it with salmon, Pacific swordfish, bass, spearfish, or albacore.
Garnish with potatoes roasted in their skins and wedges of slightly bitter
grilled escarole or endive or blanched leeks. Or offer with artichokes or
asparagus as a first course."

FOR ABOUT ONE CUP:

2 tablespoons dry white wine
A few drops of water
1/2 pound unsalted butter (2 sticks), sliced and chilled
1 tablespoon capers, rinsed, pressed dry between towels, and barely chopped
1 tablespoon rinsed, chopped Preserved Lemon or Limequat, seeds removed
Champagne vinegar, white wine vinegar, or lemon juice, as needed

Choose a heavy saucepan 6 to 8 inches in diameter. I use a 2-quart
saucepan: for a larger quantity of sauce you can use a wider pan, but for
this small quantity, a relatively small surface area is desirable. In a
wide pan, changes in the necessarily shallow pool of liquid would happen
very quickly, before you noticed, much less had time to cool the pan to slow
or stop them. This leads to caramelized wine or separated butter sauce.

Place the wine in the saucepan and reduce by half over medium heat. (If you
are concerned that you won't know when it reaches that point, first measure
1 tablespoon of wine into the pan and tilt it, and try to remember what that
amount looks like in that pan. Then add the second tablespoon of wine.) The
reduced wine should be deep yellow, not amber. Taste it: it should be
pungent, but not acrid. (If it is, pour it out, rinse the pan, and start
again.) As soon as the wine is reduced, pull the pan from the heat and
immediately add a few drops of water and a few slices of the cold butter.
Swirl, reduce the heat slightly, and return the pan to the burner. Whisk,
continuing to swirl the pan on the burner, until the first pats of butter
are nearly melted. Add another few, and continue whisking to encourage
emulsion. The emerging sauce will gain body as you add more butter. Don't
allow it to boil; if it starts, quickly pull the pan from the burner, add a
drop, or a few drops, of water at the edge, and swirl the pan to restabilize
the emulsion.

Once all of the butter is added, stir in the capers and preserved lemon.
Taste. The sauce will taste underseasoned at first, but it will get saltier
as the condiments infuse it. Add a few drops of white wine, vinegar, or
lemon juice if you would like the sauce more tart.

You can keep the warm sauce covered in a warm spot, but not over direct
heat - a double boiler is a fine idea, but it is imminently possible to
break the sauce by resting it over, or in, hot water. We hold butter sauces
in a double boiler, but instead of using water we stuff the bottom chamber
with crumpled newspaper. This arrangement insulates the fragile sauce both
from direct heat and from drafts. [BOB'S NOTE: Seems like a wide-mouth
thermos would do an even better job.]


Bob