The fruit cuts through the starchy rice, butter, stock and cheese
While they are as much a year-round fixed kitchen component as milk, flour, forks and washing-up liquid, lemons particularly come into their own at this time of year. For, although they can be cultivated perennially, this is their true season in the eastern hemisphere. And it couldn’t be better timing, nature summoning the brightest, most playful and irreducible fruit for the darkest, coldest days.
This is the point where I usually insert a story about living in the land where the lemons grow, but I have done that for the last two years in this column. Also, I’ve just reread the lemon chapter in Jane Grigson’s Fruit Book where she quotes Goethe – “Do you know that country, where the lemon trees flower” – and refers to it as the best but also most hackneyed poem, which in turn made me feel hackneyed. Her description of drinking a cold lemon spremuta is spot on: how the crystals of sugar collect at the bottom of the glass, how lemon-ish it is, and acidic, so much so that it makes your throat a bit sore for a while. It is the same with glycerin, lemon and honey, a mum’s cure for sore throats that exacerbates before it soothes and you fall asleep with sticky lemon lips and slightly numb tonsils.
Continue reading...from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2G7muN7
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