The Whole Dang Lemon

Lemon Bars, California Women, Links, & Leaving Home

{Still Life with Lemons, 1943, Henri Matisse}

Last week, my friend Lily posted a picture of the lemon bars she was making for her café, and I knew at once that I needed to make lemon bars, too. My cooking is completely driven by cravings, ones that emerge from books, Instagram, magazines, memories, the weather, nostalgia, or some inexplicable corner of my conscience. I will suddenly desire something and try my hardest to turn it into reality, which is precisely what happened with the lemon bars. I found a recipe online by David Lebovitz that looked appealing, went to the kitchen, and was delighted to discover that my parents had everything I needed in stock. There’s something so satisfying about making a special recipe without needing to go to the store for missing ingredients. 

I made a simple shortbread crust, pressing it into the pan with my hands to smooth the surface before baking it until golden brown. While the crust was baking, I whizzed whole chunks of lemon (bitter seeds removed) in the food processor with sugar, lemon juice, eggs, corn starch, salt, and melted butter. It was a glorious mixture: bright yellow with just the right balance of sweet-tart-rich. I poured the lemon filling onto the baked shortbread, and into a low oven it went for 25 minutes or so, until just set. Once I took it out, it had to cool for a while before I could slice it into triangles, but when the time finally came, the bars came out just so, with a tender, sturdy crust and a filling that was more velvety than gooey. I shouldn’t have been surprised (it was a David recipe, after all), but I was.

After my first year of college, I flew to Los Angeles to visit my friend Belén (Bel). My closest friends at Barnard were all from the West Coast, and most from California, where the sun is omnipresent and lemon trees grow. Bel is effervescent and unapologetic and strong, Los Angeles born and bred, and we are different in a lot of ways, but one of our similarities is the way in which we love food. On that ten-day trip, we ate our way through Los Angeles, weeping over Mh Zh hummus, devouring Guisados cochinita pibil tacos, shelling fava beans from the Hollywood Farmers’ Market. We’re people who follow our cravings, and we’ve always been able to share in the romance of food. She took me to her aunt’s house one day, and it blew my mind that they had a lemon tree in their garden, that you could just pick them and bring them straight to your kitchen. I remember the lemon realization as the moment I understood why Bel talked about home so often. In our cramped New York City dorm rooms, the thought of a lemon tree was intoxicating. 

{Bel’s aunt’s lemon tree}

Eliza, another Barnard-California darling whom I’ve mentioned here on several occasions, knows my affection for citrus and gave me a pair of glass earrings in the shape of lemons for my 22nd birthday. I love them. She recently moved back home to Oakland, and I don’t blame her. The brightness of the food there! The diversity of cuisines! The Happy Boy salad greens, the buttery avocados, the Berkeley Bowl mushroom aisle, the citrus trees. (Again, I don’t blame her, but I’m still praying she changes her mind and comes to New York.)

{Lemon earrings from Eliza}

Here in the Northeast I can only dream of freshly picked lemons, but I always try to have a glut of citrus at the ready, especially in the winter, and I love the idea of using the whole fruit and not letting a scrap go to waste. If you’re interested, here are some culinary approaches I’ve gathered that embrace the whole dang lemon, including the lemon bar recipe! I’ve tried most of them myself, and the others come from recipe developers whose work I trust. (There will be a paywall for some of these. I apologize!)

🍋 Whole Lemon Bars, if the sound of eating sunshine sounds good to you.

🍋 Lemon Almond Cake with Lemon Glaze: elegant, dense, intensely citrusy.  

🍋 Whole Lemon Salsa Verde for drizzling on grilled fish, fried eggs, pizza, and anything else that would benefit from herby, tangy goodness (which is everything, I’m pretty sure).

🍋 Sheet-Pan Baked Feta with Lemon is one of my go-to formulas for weeknight dinners. Just bake slabs of feta with lemon slices and spices and whatever vegetables you have around. The lemon slices aren’t just for decoration; they get caramelized and soft and sweet as they roast, and are 100% worth eating.

🍋 Boiled Lemons are a Claudia Roden classic. She prefers the flavor of boiled lemons to preserved lemons, so she uses them when preserved lemons are called for. If you find that you agree with her preference, you’ll no longer have to splurge on bougie jars of preserved lemons or plan in advance to make your own.

🍋 Chicken Tagine with Olives and Preserved Lemons is perfect for a dinner party, with most of the work done in advance. Swap boiled lemons for preserved if you wish.

It’s no coincidence that I’ve been tearing through lemons recently. They’re my most consistent winter craving, and I tend to cook and bake a lot when I’m nervous. It’s not about stress eating (I’m more of a stress abstainer than eater); it’s about putting my energy somewhere positive and doing something that demands my full attention. Kitchen tasks engage my senses—touch, smell, taste, and sight—and when I listen to a podcast or music as I work, I find that I have no room left to worry. These days I feel the good sort of nervous. My mom and I are driving to New York tomorrow to move me into my first post-grad apartment in Brooklyn. The dining room table is my staging ground, holding my mile-high stack of cookbooks, my The Way We Were poster, my mug collection—the essentials. We have a reservation at a restaurant around the corner from my apartment tomorrow night. I have a few restaurant trails scheduled for next week. This is all to say: it’s really happening! 

Wishing you well! Thanks for indulging my packing procrastination.

Warmly,

Phoebe