I bought these in a shop in London last year, knowing that I’d find a use for them and they’ve sat in my cupboard ever since. They’re strange things, light as a feather but rock hard, a bit like table tennis balls, but with a delightfully pungent lime aroma.
I found a recipe in Silk Road Cooking to use them. This could be a MoFo entry in itself because I’ve had the book for many years and not made anything from it. It looks nice and is a great read and I’m looking forward to using it more often. The recipe I chose was Elam Kidney Bean and Lime Braise, which uses dried beans, leeks and lots of fresh herbs along with the limes. I was making it midweek after work so I used tinned beans and tweaked the cooking times and added water to suit.
This really was delicious – the earthy beans work so well with the zingy limes and the herbs are braised until their flavours really come out. I served it with a geographically challenged couscous because we’ve eaten a lot of rice recently, but plain rice would work equally well.
(You don’t eat the limes but I included it in the photo so you can see what it looks like).
Have you used dried limes? What did you make?
Cooking the Vegan Books 
Weird! I’ve never even seen dried limes! But I’m intrigued. The dish sounds fantastic!
yay! I love dried limes and I use them pretty often. In fact, I just used some the other night. I’ve made this recipe from Silk Road and I enjoyed it as well. I can’t believe you’ve never cooked from Silk Road before. I LOVE IT SO MUCH! Here’s an old blog entry that has a couple more dried lime recipe links in it: http://veganeatsandtreats.blogspot.com/2011/10/veganmofo-17-whole-dried-limes-actual.html They are so great with beans and lentils – the lime just brings a little zing and life into the beans.