Recipe: Pickled Turnips and Preserved Lemons

Thanks, Linda, for your reply and your offer to look at the recipes. This message is rather long, but it does include the recipes.

I have been experimenting with Middle Eastern food. I had pickled turnips at a Syrian friend's house. She told me to just cut up raw turnips and a beet and put them in a jar with straight white vinegar and some salt and sugar and let it sit for about 2 weeks in a kitchen cabinet. I tried that and it was delicious, but then I found this recipe in a recent (published in 2000) cookbook titled, Classic Vegetarian Cooking from the Middle East and North Africa by Habeeb Salloum:

3 small beets (for color)
10 to 12 lbs. (6 qts.) small white turnips, peeled and cut into quarters
6 garlic cloves, peeled
6 tsp. coarse pickling salt
10 cups water
4 cups white vinegar

1. Boil beets until tender, then peel and cut in half. Set aside.
2. Divide turnips evenly among six sterilized quart jars. Add 1 beet half, 1 garlic clove, and 1 tsp. salt to each jar. Set aside.
3. Place water and vinegar in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer for 5 minutes.
4. Place a towel under jars; then pour in enough hot vinegar solution to cover contents. Seal jars immediately and allow to cool; then store in a cool, dry place. The pickles should be ready in 2-3 weeks.
Note: This measured quantity of vinegar and water, with the coarse salt added to each jar, is suitable for pickling many other vegetables. Some examples: cauliflower florets, carrots, small peppers, green tomatoes, gherkin-size cucumbers.

I thought the vinegar solution seemed a little dilute and I wondered whether there was a purpose to heating the vinegar solution (other than to help dissolve the salt), so I searched the web to learn more about pickling - which is how I came across Dan's posting and your replies.

The other recipe I mentioned was for preserved lemons (you use the rind in North African cooking). I actually have 2 recipes: recipe #1 is from Deborah Madison's multi-award winning cookbook Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, published 1997); the other is from the above mentioned cookbook. Both call for making slits in washed lemons and rubbing lots (no quantity given in recipe #1, recipe #2 uses 2 Tbsp. for 6 lemons) of kosher or sea salt into the slits. After packing the lemons into sterilized jars, recipe #1 says to fill the jar with lemon juice to 1/2" from the top, cover and put in a cool, dark place (or a refrigerator) to cure for 3 weeks. It notes that in the refrigerator, the lemons should keep for 6 months or longer. Recipe #2 says to fill the jar with water, close tightly and allow to stand for 2 weeks (place not specified). After 2 weeks, you change the water and add 4 peppercorns, 4 coriander seeds, 2 more Tbsp. of salt and reseal for another week. It indicates that the lemons should keep for about one year.