Chef notes
You won’t find this recipe anywhere in the canon of classic Italian American pasta dishes. Instead, it honors my mother, Rose, the Canadian wife of my Italian father. Married into a large, boisterous Italian family, she gracefully managed to perfect and streamline her in-laws’ Italian recipes while never, ever disclosing her distaste for red sauce and macaroni to us kids. Lemons were her passion. Visiting the lemon groves of Ravello in the Campagna region of southern Italy was one of her cherished travel memories. I spent much of my adult cooking life trying to delight her, lemon-wise, with the same passion she used to bring our Italian legacy to our childhood dinner table.
Dining and Cooking