A few months ago, my cousin sent me a simple recipe for a lemon pasta that sounded delicious. I finally remembered to look for some lemons with leaves and made it. It’s a simple recipe but you need to plan ahead. Serves 2:
Lemon Pasta
- 3 small lemons, preferably with leaves attached
- 1 quart water
- 8 ounces spaghettini
- 5 ounces Parmesan or Provolone cheese, grated
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- Pepper
Peel 2 of the lemons and add, with the lemon leaves, to a pot with the water. Bring to a boil, cover, remove from the heat and let steep for a couple of hours, or overnight.
In a skillet large enough to hold the pasta, put half the lemon infusion, olive oil and salt. Bring to a boil over medium high heat, add the pasta and cook until al dente, about 12 minutes. Add more of the infusion as needed.
Zest the third lemon and set aside.
When the pasta is cooked, remove from heat, stir in the zest from the last lemon, the cheese and pepper. Stir until the sauce is creamy, serve and enjoy!
My verdict:
Making the infusion, your kitchen will smell wonderful! If you can’t find lemons with the leaves, grab another lemon and peel or zest it and add to the pot.
Sadly, we didn’t love the finished dish. This was the first time my cousin has sent me a recipe that wasn’t a huge hit. I started with half of the infusion and ended up using almost all of it (about 3+ cups). Adding some cream to the sauce was a thought but after reading something recently that Italians (or Romans?) don’t use cream, that idea was dead in the water. Maybe next time along with some juice from all those naked lemons and more or different cheese—this time was Parmesan. Where I think the infusion might be great would be to use as the broth for risotto, maybe with some asparagus.
