olive oil and preserved lemon

Recently, after Chef K had brought it up a couple of times, we poached something in olive oil very slowly.  We used shrimp and also threw in a few preserved lemons cut into small pieces.  I have had shrimp all of my life in many ways (like in Bubba Gump), but this was new... and one of the best.  The flavor achieved from just the lemons in the oil (nothing else added) was very powerful.  It also resulted in a nice tender 'confit' texture in the shrimp... like a shrimp confit.

Ever since canning up my big batch of preserved lemon, we had not used them yet.  We received some nice U-8 shrimp (heads and shells were used for something else) and put them through the process.  Here they are laid out with the lemon, mace, long pepper, and dried chiles from the jar.

Afterwards they are covered in extra virgin olive oil (yes, and we even used evoo on the menu description) and then placed in a 200F oven until they are just about cooked (it took about 15 minutes with this size shrimp).

After removing from the oven, I placed the entire tray on top of another filled with crushed ice to cool it down rapidly.  Let it sit overnight in the oil.  Remove the next day to use... mmmmm tender and succulent.  I did make one obvious mistake here.  I left the lemons sit overnight as well.  Although this was good for flavor, they turn shrimp flesh into mush wherever direct contact was made.  I had to pull aside about 8 of them because of this... still great flavor though.

The amazing flavor prompted me to try a more traditional (mixed with untraditional) use of the lemon.  I placed some in sous-vide bags with cornish hen adding only a little roasted garlic oil and black pepper.  I cooked these at 75C.  The resulting flavor was incredible... only a little overdone for sous-vide.  The next time, I will try progressively lowering the temperature by 5 degrees, and again a further time if necessary.  The mix of lemon and salt seems to be the perfect flavoring enhancer for yard bird.  Maybe next time, I should also try to poach the chicken in olive oil.

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[Chicken Fried Gourmet]

like the new design :)