With their fragrant peel and sour, juicy flesh, lemons are an essential ingredient in many cuisines around the world, bringing brightness to dull dishes and balance to the overly sweet. From the large and knobbly to the small and smooth, dozens of varieties of lemon grow in countries such as Mexico, India and Spain, which have suitably mild, warm climates. Big, sour eureka and lisbon lemons are the most commonly available lemons in the UK and both are great for everyday use. The tangerine-sized bergamot lemon is known for the fragrant scent it lends to Earl Grey tea, while aromatic meyer lemons, a mandarin-lemon hybrid, yield copious amounts of sweet, citrussy juice.
Lemons perform all sorts of useful culinary roles, from tenderising meat and preventing discolouration in freshly chopped fruit to enhancing flavours and garnishing drinks. They’re particularly common in North African, Middle Eastern, Mediterranean and
Southeast Asian cooking. In Greece, lemon juice is used for marinating meats and drizzling over salads and seafood; in Italy, the zest is peeled off in strips and submerged in vodka and sugar syrup to produce limoncello, that most summery of digestifs. Preserved lemons, which give dishes a salty, savoury depth of flavour are, in Morocco, added to everything from salads and tagines; in Cambodia, they’re a key ingredient in ngam nguv, a sour chicken soup.
Lemons are available both waxed and unwaxed: waxed is fine if
