I’ve had a real taste for lemons lately.  I put lemons in my water a lot, and have been thinking of things to make using lemons.  Over the past few weeks I’ve made sweet and sour lemon chicken, a quinoa salad with lemon dressing, pasta primavera with lemon, lemon-raspberry napoleons, and a lemon pasta recipe I found at the Pioneer Woman’s blog. 

The quinoa salad was good (yummy ingredients pictured above).

I got the recipe from the second comment on this blog post. 

For the pasta primavera, I used my normal recipe, which is to

steam an assortment of vegetables in chicken broth and thyme

and then toss with pasta and Parmesan.  But I first tossed the

pasta with lemon juice and a little olive oil.  The lemon flavor

didn’t really come through much, so I’d consider that experiment

not unsuccessful (the pasta was still good), but nothing wonderful

either.

The least successful lemon recipe was the Pioneer Woman’s 

recipe for grilled chicken with lemon basil pasta.  I actually liked

it quite a bit.  The pasta is in a cream sauce with lots of lemony

flavor.  But my husband, who doesn’t like Parm that much, thought it tasted

like p-u-k-e in combination with lemon.  And my son thought it was too sour.  So I won’t be making that again.

For a lemon dessert, I thought I’d see what happened when I added

lemon to pastry cream and made lemon-raspberry napoleons.  I

added 2 Tbs of lemon zest and 1/3 cup lemon juice to my normal

pastry cream recipe, and it worked fine.  It had lots of lemony flavor,

but I didn’t care for it that much in the napoleons.  There just wasn’t

enough of the other things to balance the lemony pastry cream.

I think it would make an excellent filling for a yellow layer cake,

though, and I’m planning to try that later this summer.  I think it

would be fine if I cut the lemon juice down to 1/4 cup.

The most successful lemon recipe was the sweet and sour lemon

chicken - a recipe from a Betty Crocker cookbook I tried 10 years

ago when I was a newlywed.  I like to serve it with coconut rice, and

it was a good meal.  My son made me take off the lemon coating, but

the rest of the family enjoyed it.  From among the many not-so-great recipes in that cookbook, this one is golden, I think.  Here’s the recipe:

For the chicken:

4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts, pounded thin

1 egg white with a little water

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 to 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

Coat the chicken in egg white, then in a mixture of flour, baking soda, and cayenne.  Bake at 450 degrees for about 20 minutes, or until done.  While hot, pour the lemon sauce over each piece of chicken.  Garnish with sliced green onion if desired.

Lemon sauce:

1/3 cup chicken broth

1/4 cup sugar

1 1/2 tsp lemon zest

3 Tbs lemon juice

2 Tbs rice vinegar

1/2 tsp garlic powder

2 tsp corn starch

2 tsp cold water

Heat everything except the corn starch and water over medium heat, stirring occasionally.  Mix together the corn starch and water, and cook, stirring, for about 30 seconds or until thickened.

For the coconut rice, just cook white rice like you normally would, but with 3 parts coconut milk and 1 part water.  I served mine with some pineapple slices as well.