Spaghetti al limone is another very simple but delicious pasta recipe that I have not heard of before. It requires a good ripe lemon, which can be quite tricky to get. But the result is an amazing fruity meal that is worth the search for sure.

Ingredients

• fresh pasta (dough from 250g flour)
• very ripe organic lemon (edible zest)
• ca 40g grated parmesan
• 1 garlic clove
• 1 seeded chili
• 50g butter
• 50g heavy cream
• salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

Grate the lemon peel and the parmesan. Peel the garlic clove and cut it in half. Remove the seeds from the chili (I used dried bonnet scotch) and cut it as fine as you can. Squeeze out the lemon juice. Depending on how ripe your lemon is you will need the whole juice (if very ripe) or only half of it.

Start cooking the pasta.

Melt the butter in a big pan until it starts to bubble. Add the garlic, lemon zest and chili and let it fry for a minute (or until the ingredients start to smell). Just ensure that the garlic does not get golden. Add the heavy cream and mix it in well. When the mixture starts boiling again remove the pan from the heat. Now remove the garlic clove from the pan.

Wait until the pasta is done and add them to the pan. Do not throw away all pasta water, you might want some later on. One or two soup spoons should be enough.

Now its time to add the lemon juice (*) as well as a part of your grated parmesan. Only add a bit of cheese at a time and stir well until it gets fully dissolved. In case the sauce is too dry, add some pasta water. Once the whole cheese is in and your sauce has the right consistency you are ready to serve this dish. In case the sauce is too dry, mix in some pasta water and let it cook while stirring the pasta. If it is too wet, just let it cook for a bit longer.

(*) If you have a really ripe lemon you can add the juice of the whole lemon. If not, I would start with 1/3 and go up no further than the juice of a half lemon.