Was I excited? You bet I was.
I was at the Alphington Melbourne Farmers’ Market yesterday and found these beauties at the Sennsational berries stall.
It is not often that one finds such mature lemons. And what to do with large lemons?
Make a Sicilian salad like my father used to make (he grew up in Ragusa, Sicily before relocating to Trieste). I did wonder if it was a cedro rather than a lemon, but was told it was a lemon and it tasted like one.
I removed the skin and squeezed out some of the juice….this lemon was certainly juicy and the salad should not be too acidic.
This salad likes fresh garlic and I still had some in the fridge that I had bought the week before from the same market, however this time I bought some garlic shoots, added fresh mint, a little parsley and some of the fresh oregano I have growing on my balcony. This oregano plant came from my father’s garden in Adelaide. He died years ago.
The last time I bought garlic shoots was earlier this year when I was in the Maremma, Tuscany.
In our Airbnb in Castiglione della Pescaia I cooked them with zucchini and zucchini flowers as a dressing for Pici, the local pasta shape in Tuscany.
Back to the lemon salad in Melbourne, Australia:
Some good extra virgin olive oil and salt are a must. The salt brings out the sweetness of the lemon.
So, so good for summer. Think about it accompanying some seafood…BBQ fish? Very good. I took it to my friends place and we had it with a simple roast chicken, a succulent free range chicken.
I have written about lemon salad before. That post also explains what is a cedro and has a photo of a cedro from a Sicilian market.
LEMON and CEDRO – SICILIAN LEMON SALAD
I shared my recipe with the stall owners. They were excited too.
