Edith Afif’s Lime Pickles

I call these lime pickles because that’s what my friend Steve, who gave me this recipe of his late mother’s, calls them. But think, rather, of limes, salted, rinsed and preserved in aromatic oil. When the Edith of the title made these in her native Egypt, she dredged the limes with salt over days; only later did she adapt her method to what was then modern technology. People can get so precious about tradition that I love the proof that change and modernity can be progress: somehow, salting