20-Minute Pasta al Limone

When I was 19, my family took a road trip to visit friends in Sicily. We drove from our beach house on the Adriatic coast of Abruzzo in central Italy down to Reggio Calabria, the tip of the boot. There, we caught the car ferry to Messina and, after a short stay in Palermo, eventually reached our destination, Mazara del Vallo, on Sicily’s western coast.

I was not the most observant 19-year-old, I’m sorry to say, so most of the details of the trip are long gone. But I remember a few things: how the view outside the car window gradually changed the farther south we got, from the lush green forests of Molise to the tomato fields of Campania (against the backdrop of Mount Vesuvius) and then to an alien (to me) arid landscape dotted with spiky Dr. Seuss-like agave trees and prickly pears before we finally reached Mazara del Vallo. We were so close to Africa that we could listen to Tunisian stations on the car radio. Mazara is where I received my first marriage proposal, from a rambunctious but adorable 4-year-old named Guido. And it’s where I first walked through a citrus grove at the home of one of our friends—it was, essentially, their backyard.

For a teenager who spent most of the year in suburban New Jersey, our family’s annual summer trips to Italy were magical. But there was something especially enchanting about wandering through a grove of beautifully symmetrical lemon and orange trees, offering up their leafy green branches laden with ripening fruit. It made me think of Renaissance paintings and tapestries, and from that moment I have always thought of lemons and oranges—all citrus, really—as small, edible treasures.

It wasn’t until a few years ago, when I read journalist Helena Attlee’s wonderful book, The Land Where Lemons Grow: The Story of Italy and Its Citrus Fruit, that I learned that Sicily is where the first citrus fruits arrived in Italy, long before the Renaissance. Lemons and sour oranges landed in 827 A.D. with invading Arabs. Where did they land? Mazara del Vallo.

Today Sicily grows a variety of citrus, including lemons, blood oranges, sour oranges and mandarins, but it is not the only Italian region where citrus is cultivated. Italy’s mountainous topography and the fact that it is nearly surrounded by water means it has many microclimates, and when that microclimate supports citrus, it's often grown there.

Lemons thrive as far north as Liguria, a crescent of a region along the northern Mediterranean coast better known as the Italian Riviera. Here you’ll find a profusion of lemons and a bitter orange called chinotto. Even farther north, in the lake district of Lombardy, there is a town on the western shore of Lake Garda called Limone, which means lemon in Italian. To the north, the snow-capped Italian Alps form Limone’s picturesque backdrop. But the protective mountains have also blessed the resort town with a mild climate that has turned out to be ideal for growing lemons, which locals have been cultivating since the 17th century. All around are terraced lemon “houses” called limonaie, rising above the town on rocky slopes.

And yet, neither Sicily nor Lombardy are home to Italy’s most celebrated lemons. Those would be the lemons that grow on the Sorrento peninsula south of Naples—the stunning Amalfi Coast. The lemons of Amalfi and Sorrento are softball-sized and football-shaped, with a thick, bumpy rind that contains a high concentration of aromatic oils. The flesh is acidic but not overly sharp, verging on sweet.

These lemons are put to use in all kinds of delectable preparations: sparkling limoncello liqueur; lemon sorbetto and its boozy cousin, sgroppino, to which prosecco and vodka are added; delizia al limone, a domed sponge cake filled with lemon cream and covered with lemon icing; even lemon salad, in which the thinly sliced fruit is dressed with olive oil, vinegar, garlic and chopped mint. And, of course, Pasta al Limone.

In its simplest form, Pasta al Limone is nothing more than cooked pasta dressed in raw garlic, parsley and the juice of a Sorrento lemon. It’s fresh and zesty and requires next to no time to prepare. There are many variations. Some contain wine, others are enriched with butter or cream. The truth is, if, like me, you rely on everyday supermarket lemons, you’ll need to cut the sharpness of the juice if you want to make Pasta al Limone. My preference is to add a splash of cream. That plus a little of the starchy pasta water nicely balances the lemon. My family loves this dish, and so do I. Whenever I make it, I am reminded of my first marriage proposal and my magical meander through an Italian citrus grove.