The little fruit that makes everything taste better
I try not to, but I often take lemons for granted. I'll buy a few more than I need for a recipe, drop the extras into a refrigerator drawer and forget them for weeks. Then one day, I'll be scrounging around trying to put a meal together with what seems like nothing, and I'll reach for one. A squeeze into a pot of just-cooked beans simultaneously lifts the flavors and pulls them together; a grating of the zest into a salad dressing takes it from dull to bright in an instant.
Every time, I think to myself, "Why don't I use lemons every day?"
Especially since I appreciate their power year-round: In the colder months, I love how they can counteract the deep, sometimes-muddy flavors of stews and soups and other long-cooked dishes. Now that the weather has warmed up, I like to move the sunny tartness of lemon (or other acidic ingredients) to the forefront of a dish's flavor profile.
Call something lemony, and I'm usually on board. That's why I gravitated to a green bean pasta salad recipe in Rebecca Lang's "The Southern Vegetable Book" (Oxmoor House, 2016). Well, that and the fact that she includes some of my other favorite flavor-packed ingredients in the mix, too: pistachios, vinegar, shallots, garlic. It's a quick dish with some nifty strategies: You cut the green beans in half lengthwise, which makes them that much faster to cook and more pleasant to eat, and you cook them in the same water with the pasta, throwing them in during the last few minutes.
But it's Lang's way with zest that really sold me on the dish: You grate a good amount off a lemon, almost 2 tablespoons, toss some of it with the drained pasta and green beans, and use the rest in a pistachio-shallot dressing. That flavor doesn't just come through; it shines. And it reminds me that I never need an excuse to reach for a lemon.