Preserved lemons

So I finally preserved something without wrecking it. To be more precise, a big jar of lemons.

Even more amazingly, I just followed the easiest and laziest recipe I could find. And it WORKED!
Some recipes are all on about filling up the jar with lemon juice, adding herbs, spices, sterilising left right and centre, and so on. It's important to remember that back in the old country, they weren't sterilising nothing. They were shoving the lemons in an old earthenware pot, chucking in some salt, sealing it up and putting it behind the mat pile for a month. And I fully subscribe to the good old ways when doing stuff like this.

Get a big bag of lemons and a big glass or ceramic jar. Wash the lemons, and almost-cut them lengthwise into quarters. Stop before you cut all the way through, though. Now get a bag of coarse rock salt, and shove lots of salt messily into the cut lemon bodies. Try not to let too much fall out, and try to cover each cut surface as thickly as possible. Jam each full lemon into your jar, shoving them tightly in. Pour boiling water over the lot to cover all the lemons, seal up your jar and stick it in the back of the cupboard for a month. When you remember to, turn the jar over occasionally.
After a month, your lemons will be existing in a chemically-transformed primordial yellow-tinged seawater concoction, as salty as Satan's Kettle chips.
Make yourself a delicious dinner of lamb, salad and couscous to best display your Frankenlemons. Take one of the lemon quarters, rinse it, scrape off all the flesh (which will now be a squishy slimy goop) and the white pith, if you can. Finely slice the rind and sprinkle over the couscous.
I've heard these would make a great homemade gift, and I'm sure they would, except you'd have to be sure your friends are into Middle-Eastern / Moroccan cooking and would know what to do with the lemons. Very easy to prepare, though.