Posts Tagged ‘lemon’

Almost Rao’s Lemon Chicken

Oh, the power of suggestion.

I saw an episode of “Barefoot Contessa” recently where Ina visited legendary New York Italian restaurant Rao’s, and learned to cook their famous lemon chicken. Essentially, it’s broiled chicken that’s then bathed in a simple lemon-garlic vinaigrette, but I wanted to eat the television, it looked so succulent. I could barely wait to make it for dinner the next day with fresh poultry from the chicken farm up the road.

I almost always follow a recipe exactly the first time I make it, but this time was an exception. I underestimated the number of lemons I would need, so I was shy on the amount of lemon juice it called for. And because…


It’s no wonder my boys adore lemonade. Every time I was pregnant, I drank gallons and gallons of the stuff ““ and it had to be homemade. None of that powdered junk or frozen concentrate. In fact, the first hint I had that I was pregnant with the twins was a sudden craving for lemonade (and full-sour pickles from Carnegie Deli!).

Lemonade makes us all smile, and we even make it from time to time in the cold of winter as a cheerful reminder of warmer, sunnier days. The happy color and the sweet-tart flavor are like liquid sunshine, and we couldn’t think of a better way to end this fantastic summer than by sharing a…


Okay, so it was spaghetti with shrimp scampi…but I have to tell you it was exceptional spaghetti and it made the dish especially mouthwatering.

This is one of our weekday standbys. I keep cleaned, top-quality IQF Texas Toros in the freezer, so the dish takes less than half an hour from start to finish, and it’s a cinch to pull together on late Little League nights or when I’m not in the mood to make anything complicated. I usually have the rest of the ingredients on hand in the fridge and pantry ““ pasta, garlic, butter, lemons, olive oil, parsley, salt and pepper ““ so it’s often a last-minute dish for us….


Barefoot Contessa Lemon Bars

I love lemonade, lemon sorbet, lemon chicken, lemon pound cake and I’ve been known to suck on raw lemons since I was a little girl, but I’m not a big fan of lemon bars. There’s something just too sickeningly sweet and oozy about them that doesn’t appeal to me. However, I know other peeps don’t share my turn-off, and I thought they would be a tangy contrast to a platter of rich brownies I was bringing to a get-together, so I made a batch.

To truly make them correctly, you need more than a couple of hours, since you have to:

1. chill the dough for a while after you press it into the pan,


What a crowd pleaser! We served this with capellini tossed with a buttered-down version of the same lemon-butter sauce and the gang really enjoyed this easy dinner. Of course with the original recipe serving four, we tripled it so we would feed the hungry troops and we’d have leftovers for lunch. It took us a little over an hour to cook all that chicken, and with the increased frying time and sauce reduction time, we estimate it would take about 22 minutes to cook the original quantity of the recipe.

I had two chefs in the kitchen today, and they worked well both together and individually. First, they pounded the chicken breasts down to about 1/4″…