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Help! Lemon tree gone wild! Need savory recipes to use up these lemons.
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Chicken Piccatta
Fish loves lemon. My Mom makes a great poached fish, where you put it in a skillet with some chicken stock, lemon juice/zest, garam masala, paprika, salt, and pepper, cover and cook on medium until done. Tastes so good, even with cheap fish.
Lemon goes great on a lot of Greek/Eastern Mediterranean dishes. Fattoush (a Lebanese salad) uses it. A number of Mediterranean salads will use lemon juice in place of or in addition to vinegar. So you can mix lemon juice (and zest, if desired), olive oil, and some vinegar (or not, up to you) and put that on any type of salad. Lemon goes great on falafel, on gyro, on döner. Lemon basmati rice, rice with chicken and lemon (basically chicken kabsa or chicken biryani with lemon on it). The list goes on, and I already feel like Bubba from Forrest Gump.
Some ways of preserving lemons have been covered, but I thought I’d throw out the idea of candying the lemon peels. Makes them last longer, and they go great in any sweet thing you make down the road.
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Lemon [curd] can be canned and used in a ton of recipes.
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https://www.huffpost.com/entry/savory-lemon-recipes_n_1165174
[Pasta Al Limone]
This is one of my favorite savory lemon recipes.
Kefta tagine with lemon and cilantro
By GHILLIE BASAN
June 10, 2008 at 7:34 pm
This meatball-like tagine can be prepared ahead, then refrigerated and reheated. Serve it with crusty bread, couscous or a salad.
Serves 4-6
For the kefta:
1 pound finely ground lamb or beef
1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped or grated
Small bunch flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper or 1 teaspoon paprika
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
For the tagine:
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon butter or ghee
1 medium yellow onion, roughly chopped
3 cloves garlic, halved and smashed
1-inch chunk fresh ginger, peeled and finely chopped
1 small red chile, seeds removed, finely sliced
2 teaspoons turmeric
1 1/4 cups water
Small bunch cilantro or parsley, chopped
2 lemons
Small bunch mint leaves, chopped
To make the kefta: In a large bowl, use your hands to pound the air out of the ground lamb or beef. To do this, pick up the meat and slap it back down into the bowl several times. Add the onion, parsley, cinnamon, cumin, coriander, cayenne, and salt and pepper. Use your hands to mix together the ingredients, kneading and pounding the mixture well. Form into walnut-sized balls and set aside.
For the tagine: In the bottom of a tagine or heavy-based casserole dish, heat oil and butter over medium-high. Stir in onion, garlic, ginger and chile. Saute until they begin to brown. Add the turmeric, water and half the cilantro. Bring the water to a boil then reduce heat, cover and simmer 10 minutes.
Carefully set the kefta in the tagine then cover and continue cooking for about 15 minutes, turning the kefta occasionally during cooking. Juice one lemon and pour the juice over the kefta. Season with salt and pepper. Cut the remaining lemon into 6 wedges and tuck the pieces around the kefta. Cover and cook 10 minutes more.
Sprinkle kefta with the mint and remaining cilantro. Serve.
Adapted from “Flavors of Morocco,” by Ghillie Basan
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Slice two lemons super thin slices. Pound some chicken (1-2 breasts) thin, coat with flour and thyme, salt and pepper. Saute in a skillet in butter until one side is nice, then flip chicken and throw 2 sliced lemons on top with a can of artichoke hearts (drained) on top and some capers maybe 1/8 cup. Cook a few more minutes, then throw in about 3/4 cup of a dry white wine, and cook until chicken is done and sauce is reduced a bit. I like this with green beans or broccoli and mashed potatoes because it makes a nice lemony sauce! One of my favorite dinners!
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Cheesecake recipe
1 stick Philadelphia cream cheese
—— 1/4 cup lemon juice
——1 small can of sweetened condensed milk
Mix everything w a hand mixer. Pour mixture into graham cracker crust. Let it sit over night in the fridge. Top w canned cherries or strawberries.
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There are loads of savory dishes that call for lemons. Greek lemon chicken soup, scampi shrimp pasta, salad dressings, these are a few I can think of off the top of my head.
For future uses, cause I assume you won’t plow through 50 lemons in one night, you can juice your lemons and store it in a big bottle. Lemon juice is a great source of acid used in a variety of marinades to break down protein and tenderize meat. Basic formation for any marinade is salt, acid and fat. To name a few more elaborate suggestions, I would say lemon pepper, honey garlic lemon, lemon + any Hispanic spices, etc.
I would also suggest lemon syrup or lemon preserves/marmalade, which can goes into a multitude of deserts or savory dishes alike.
All those lemons can also be zested. Zest can be freeze dried to make lemon powder, which you can use to make spice mixes such as lemon pepper or lemon sugar.
If you don’t want to zest a gazillion lemons, you can chop the peels into thin long pieces and make candied rinds. These store well and make great snacks.
Alternatively, slices of lemon can also be candied. Or you can soak them in honey, salt and ginger to make natural cough drops.
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Lemon Confit:
Spaghetti al Limone all the way!
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Not savory but how about a delicious dessert of lemon granita instead?
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I dont follow this recipe exactly. I use a lot more lemon juice but this is my absolute favorite chicken.
Lemon pepper salmon/tilapia?
My mom makes a sort of salad where you have shredded chicken, pepper, basil, onion, and lime and that’s usually eaten with rice or with other greens. you can probably substitute it with some lemon juice no problem.
If you can’t think of anything else, you can use the remaining lemons as a special bath, like throw the rinds and spent juice and stuff in the hot tub along with some epsom salt or whatever else you like to put in your bath.
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I found a recipe in a Martha Stewart magazine many years ago- the name was simple like spaghetti with breadcrumbs. It uses garlic, anchovies, olive oil, onion, lemon zest and juice, pasta water and breadcrumbs to make a delicious savory dish. I can’t find the exact recipe online (I’ve seen it call Sicilian spaghetti on other sites). But this is the closest to the recipe I had. It is really tasty and easy to make.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/mar/14/sicilian-pasta-anchovy-lemon-breadcrumbs-recipe-rachel-roddy
Pasta with anchovy, lemon and breadcrumbs
Serves 4
A small onion
A small garlic clove
1 large lemon
8 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, plus more for toasting the breadcrumbs
50g anchovy fillets
50g breadcrumbs
Salt
400–500g pasta (penne, mezze maniche, linguine, spaghetti)
1 Peel the onion and garlic, then cut the onion into eighths, and the garlic clove in half. Use a peeler to take off two strips of lemon. Put the olive oil, anchovies, onion, garlic and lemon in a frying pan and warm over a very low flame until the anchovies have disintegrated into the oil. Take off the heat and leave to sit.
2 Prepare the breadcrumbs by frying them gently, over a low-medium flame in a little olive oil, with a pinch of salt, until they are just starting to turn golden – keep an eye on them – then pull them from the heat.
3 Bring a pan of water to the boil, add salt, then the pasta and cook until al dente. Meanwhile, use a slotted spoon to lift the onion, garlic and lemon from the oil.
4 In the last minute of pasta cooking time, gently warm the oil and anchovies. Once the pasta is ready, drain it, then mix with the oil, either in the frying pan, or if you have used a small pan, a bowl. Add the juice of half a lemon and toss vigorously to emulsify the oil and lemon juice into a cream. Divide between plates, and top each serving with crumbs and a little grated lemon if you like.
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One Pot Lemon Chicken Pasta!
Cut up some chicken breast into 1 inch cubes and season with salt and pepper and some lemon zest. Sear off in a pan and get a lovely fond going (don’t worry about cooking them all the way through right now just get a good sear). Leaving the chicken in the pan deglaze with lemon juice (again make sure the lemon isn’t overly sweet – I normally use about 1/2 a lemon) and chicken stock or white wine (or both) seasoned with tarragon, thyme, sage, etc. bring liquid to a simmer and add in pasta. Cook pasta in the liquid monitoring to make sure the liquid is reducing to leave you with a nice sauce. Once the pasta is cooked and a good saucy amount of liquid remains add a pat of salted butter and grate in a little fresh parm.
You can also cook the chicken fully, remove it from the pan and follow the rest of the instructions but this is one of my lazy meals so I rarely bother.
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Not savoury but I’m so jealous of you! Lemons are pretty expensive in Australia right now, and you need heaps to make this (for more than one person)
4 shots lemon juice
1 shot Cointreau
1 shot watermelon liqueur
Dash of raspberry syrup
Shake and serve on ice
It’s called a Warhead and it’s my favourite cocktail at the moment