Posted on: Wednesday, December 29, 2004

FOOD FOR THOUGHT
What? No recipe for lemon peel?

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Food Editor

I'm on a mission again.

It began with the following e-mail from online reader Ben Hay, who lives in Richland, Wash. "I spent kindergarten through 6th grade in Hawai'i and got a taste for crack seed. My favorite was lemon peel. Over the past couple years, we have ordered it from various crack-seed distributors on O'ahu. It is good but expensive.

"I was wondering how hard it is to make this delicacy. I recall an old grandmother neighbor who had a big glass jar of some lemons in nasty looking brown liquid in her back yard and I reckon now that perhaps she was in the process of making some. I figure it can't be too hard, but without any instruction, it is not obvious how to proceed. I looked on the Web but was unable to find a recipe. Last time we were in Honolulu, I asked every old Asian woman I came across if she knew how to make lemon peel, but failed to find anyone that did."

I sent off a breezy reply, promising that I would find a recipe among my collection of community cookbooks.

As I write this, I'm just back from an hour and a half in the stacks of the Hawai'i State Library, where I checked the index of every Hawai'i cookbook on the shelves for: Lemon. Lemon peel. Peel, lemon. Preserved lemon. Pickled lemon.

And guess what? Not one, single recipe.

Why would this be? In my childhood, every other house in Hawai'i had a giant mayonnaise jar on the roof of the carport. They were as much a part of the scenery as slippers on the porch and plumeria trees in the yard.

Perhaps the recipe was considered too simple and too universal to record back then.

I did find out how to make pickled lemons, finally, by whining to my friend Janet Chu (a Mauian now living in Seattle): "There IS no recipe," she said. "You just wash whole lemons, put them in one of those huge, industrial-size mayonnaise jars with Hawaiian salt. Layer them — lemon, salt, lemon, salt. A gallon lemons, a cup salt. Cover it, put the jar on the roof and wait 6 months."

Just before I finished this column I did find a pickled-lemon procedure in "Oldies but Goodies, Vol. 1," a recipe collection by Na Pua Mae'ole O Kamehameha (1983). They add one step to Jan's advice: Begin by massaging and rolling thin-skinned lemons with a little Hawaiian salt, then placing them in a bamboo tray in the sun for three days, bringing them in each night for more salt and massage. Then layer them with salt in the big jar and age for at least 6 months. The resulting wet lemon is used for sore throats, stomach upsets and snacks.

But I still don't know how to do the lemon peel.

So if you have a recipe for sweet-sour lemon peel or li-hing lemon peel, send it along. I'd also love to hear your stories from pickled-lemon days. Send to: Food for Thought, Taste, The Advertiser, P.O. Box 3110, Honolulu, HI 96802; wadams@honoluluadvertiser.com; or fax 525-8055.

Mr. Hay and I are counting on you.