I still get a ridiculous amount of pleasure from seeing actual lemons hanging on actual lemon trees. You’d think after 10 years in Rome the novelty would have worn off, but no: every time I see an actual lemon tree, with actual lemons, it is an occasion.
One of the trees I pass often is in the garden of my friend Cinzia on the nearby Aventine hill. There are lots of bitter-orange trees on the Aventine, in the orange garden by the church Santa Sabina, in the gardens of convents and those of handsome villas. However, it is Cinzia’s lemon tree, poking above her garden wall, with its pale leaves and fruits like huge knobbly teardrops, that always strikes me as the most lovely. Probably because I have a vested interest: when they are in season – which is now – Cinzia allows me to pick her lemons. Back home, yet another pleasure: like proper aromatherapy, zesting and squeezing them.
It is rare when I don’t have a bowl of lemons in the kitchen – sometimes pulled from a tree, other times tipped from a yellow net bag. Like sunshine in the kitchen, lemons are beautiful and glorious. They’re endlessly useful too, as a star ingredient – quick dabs of perfume, or for seasoning; the quiet volunteer working away in the background.
Lemon juice acts in much the same way as salt, bringing out flavours. It’s the equivalent of a sound engineer, adjusting the balance, lifting, deepening, sharpening, brightening, filling out, making things taste more like themselves. When something is missing in a braised dish, a stew, a fruit pudding, a soup or fruit puree, a spritz of lemon is often the answer, pulling the dish together. You might not know it is there, but you would miss it if it wasn’t.
I was slaphappy with lemons long before I came to Italy, but have broadened my tastes since living in Rome with a Sicilian. My partner’s grandfather, a Sicilian farmer, ate a lemon a day – skin, pith; the whole lot. It was his equivalent of an apple a day. My English grandpa shuddered at just the thought of sucking the tiny yellow triangle in his gin and tonic. True, there was a world of difference between the mild Sicilian limone, with its inch of almost sweet pith and juicy flesh, and the lemons used in my Granny’s pub at the bottom of a hill in Oldham, but I still like the comparison.
Vincenzo does not eat lemons like apples, but he does use them all the time – often in places where I might reach for salt, squeezing great smiling wedges on salad, raw and cooked vegetables, fish, fried things, and other fruits – particularly watermelons and strawberries. If he ate meat he would spritz that, too: in Italy, grilled meat is always served with a wedge of lemon to give it a final lift and added moisture. Vincenzo puts fat curls of zest in his espresso if he has a headache (it works), puts juice and a bay leaf in hot water if he has a sore throat, or mixes the juice with salt and fizzy water – for aqua, sale e limone – when it is very hot. He then washes the greasy dishes with the squeezed-out shells.
Sicily meets Rome in our variation on the great Roman standby Spaghetti ajo, ojo e peperoncino – spaghetti with olive oil, garlic and chilli – finished with a big handful of chopped parsley and lemon zest. It’s a dish I crave when I haven’t had it for a while. It is a simple meal, complex in tastes; the bright clean oil, the pungent garlic, the throat-tickling heat of the chilli, the grassy parsley (a fleck of which always gets stuck in your teeth) and the volatile, aromatic oil in the lemon zest.
Spaghetti with lemon, parsley, garlic and chilli
How much you make of this is of course entirely up to you, depending on how many somersaults you want to happen in your mouth. However you make it, it is an invigorating, but comforting meal – just the thing for these January days, maybe.
Serves 4
2 large unwaxed lemons
A big handful of flat-leaf parsley
500g spaghetti
1–2 garlic cloves
A small dried chilli or pinch of red chilli flakes
6 tbsp olive oil
1 Grate the zest from the lemon and very finely chop the parsley, then mix the two together and set aside.
2 Bring a large pan of well-salted water to a fast boil, add salt, stir, then add the spaghetti and cook until al dente. Meanwhile, very finely chop the garlic and chilli.
3 In a large frying pan, very gently warm the olive oil, garlic and chilli over a low flame until fragrant – do not let it burn. Once the spaghetti is cooked, drain it – or better still, use a sieve or tongs to lift the spaghetti and a just a little residual water into the frying pan. Stir, add the lemon and parsley, a pinch of salt and if you like a squeeze of lemon, stir again, divide between plates and eat immediately.
