…make Pasta al Limone!
I am a proponent of drying just about any food to concentrate its flavor. Vegetables contain 75-95% water. Meat, poultry, and fish are all in the range of 60-80%. Water is life. But water is, well, tasteless.
Dehydration is the haiku of food preparation, reducing, heightening, and focusing the essential flavor and aroma of food. Think of salt cod or salt-cured anchovies, jerky and fruit leather, raisins, the nectar of late harvest wines made from grapes desiccated by “noble rot”, prosciutto, chili flakes, hard cheese…the list goes on. While untangling the overgrowth of my Lisbon lemon tree, I tried the technique on the leaves. Drying and reducing them to a powder revealed a facet of lemon’s fragrant perfume not usually tapped. Lemon leaves contain abundant oil found in their glands and are responsible for the characteristic citrus scent of the tree itself.
It takes hardly any time to dry fresh lemon leaves. All you need to do is spread them loosely on a sheet pan, set the oven to 200 F, and return 30 minutes later to leaves that have dried crisp as potato chips.
To turn them to powder, you first rub the leaves to separate them from the “midrib” or central vein of the leaf, crinkle them into flakes, and whizz them to a fine powder in a spice grinder. Passing the powder through a fine sieve is advisable to eliminate any bits of the midribs you may have missed. Hold the sieve low and steady over a catch plate then knock the side of the sieve with the open palm of your free hand. I keep a stash of the powder to season fish, poached chicken, and to garnish avgolemono soup. I add lemon leaf powder to toasted salt (Maldon and the like), with other aromatic additions for a rub down on meats to be roasted, pork in particular.
By itself, lemon powder is the magic dust that crowns my take on Pasta al Limone, a celebration of the fruit and the tree.
Pasta al Limone for 4
Ingredients for the pasta and sauce are precise. Under or over-seasoning the supporting ingredients in the sauce can easily upset the balance. Lemon should be the bright standout.
For the pasta: 4 whole eggs/400 grams of “00” Flour. Stir the beaten egg into the flour and a few drops of water if necessary to gather up any dry crumbles. Knead until smooth, elastic, and no bits of flour appear in the dough. All of this can be cleanly accomplished in a bowl large enough to fit your working hand. Why mess up the counter? Seal in film and let hydrate for 2 hours. Roll out wide thin ribbons of the dough on a pasta machine. Cut into 15-inch lengths and dust with flour. Roll the ribbons into a loose cylinder and slice into tagliolini strands about 3/16” wide. Separate the strands and dust and fluff with flour.
Sauce ingredients: 54 grams Grated Pecorino Romano; 18 grams Parmigiano Reggiano; 5 grams fresh lemon zest; 36 grams fresh lemon juice (Eureka or Lisbon); 70 grams unsalted butter. Pasta water to create a creamy sauce.
Cook the pasta in a minimum amount of lightly salted water to just cover it . When the pasta is al dente, ladle off a little of the cooking water and reserve it. The slightly starchy water will aid in forming a creamy sauce as the cheese melts and fuses. Transfer the pasta to a colander, drain most of the water away, and return it to the cooking pot. Add the butter, lemon juice and zest. Stir in the cheese and reduce over very low heat. Stir to melt the cheese adding a little of the cooking water.