Pickled Limes and superstitions

I love Mediterranean food and its cooking. Several of the Mediterranean recipes include pickled lemons. In Yottam Ottolenghi’s cookbook Jerusalem, he has a recipe for pickled lemons where one can substitute the lemons with limes.

With a generous lime tree in the garden, I am looking for ways to use the limes. I thought homemade pickled limes are just what the Towerwater pantry needs.

On Sunday morning I took the big enamel bowl and went into the garden to pick limes. Having sterilised my jars and with a good stock of salt, I was ready for this new adventure.

Yottam Ottolenghi’s recipe calls for two processes. First one preserves the limes in salt. A week later one adds the extra lime juice, chilli, pepper corns and bay leaves.

In no time I had bottled my limes in a sea of juice and salt and they were ready to stand for a week.  After a week, I will add the rest of the ingredients. This final mix will stand and mature for another 6 weeks before I can taste the homemade pickles.

With the limes safely pickled, I looked at the lime juice and salt on the table and contemplated the bad luck I might have invoked by spilling the salt. Not really being superstitious, I thought perhaps I had better play safe and throw a pinch of the spilled salt over my left shoulder into the eyes of the devil lurking there.

It did not end up in the devil's eye but on the kitchen floor. I looked down at the spilt salt and wondered whether I should pick it up and toss some over my left shoulder again. I realised that tossing the salt over my left shoulder was a bad idea and that I can get caught up in a chain of spilling salt and tossing it over my left shoulder.

I decided to stand with my back to the open kitchen bin and tossed the spilt salt over my left shoulder, blinding the devil before it ended up in the bin. In one smooth move I warded off evil and cleaned the kitchen.