Southern Italy is lemon country, but people all over Italy habitually eat lemons—to the point that they drizzle olive oil and lemon juice on everything the way the Japanese sprinkle everything with soy sauce. The Italians will put lemon juice on beans boiled in salted water or any boiled vegetables, grilled fish, steamed fish, steak, raw vegetables—almost anything. When the main course is finished they’ll have lemon sorbet. They’ll even top it all off with limoncello, a digestif made from lemon peels. It’s like their entire cuisine is built around lemons.
It’s common for lemons and other citrus to be grown in coastal regions, but even Italians who live in the interior often plant lemon trees or keep them as potted plants, proving that the Italians have a special attachment to this yellow fruit. But in northern Italy and places like Milan in particular, they’re hard to grow and particularly vulnerable in winter, so people with potted lemon trees in their gardens have to bring them in whenever it freezes at night or use special coverings so they don’t get damaged in the cold. In some places, the lemon trees will wither if they spend just a single night outside because the family forgets to bring them in. It makes you realize just how sensitive to cold this poor little lemon guy is.
Lemon peel is sometimes used as a secret ingredient in dishes as well. If you use a slicer to create fine lemon peel slices or thin shavings and put them on top of risotto, for example, it will add a pop of flavor to the otherwise mild, rich risotto for a more expansive taste. That’s just one example of how lemon peel can enhance a dish or a drink, and it’s interesting to see supermarkets selling almost equal amounts of lemons with edible peels and lemons with peels that you probably shouldn’t eat—even though they’re priced differently.
How about a citron, or cedro? They’re another citrus fruit that looks a lot like a lemon and grows in southern Italy, particularly Sicily. But if you cut a citron open and look at it you’ll be like… huh? Just a tiny bit of fruit surrounded by a huge white pith. It looks like something you wouldn’t bother eating, but the white part is actually the good part. If you peel off the yellow layer and cut the fruit and white part into chunks or slices and toss them in a salad, or sprinkle them with salt or olive oil, you can eat them just like that. Citron isn’t intensely sour like a lemon, so you can just enjoy that pleasant flavor without the punch.
They come in different varieties, but many citrons are huge. Here’s one compared to a lemon, for example.
If they’re not big, the skin is all puckered and rough, making them rather unpleasant to look at—but in any case they’re each unique, which makes them pretty interesting.
