When we visit our local Italian restaurant one of my favourite dishes is veal al limone.
In South Africa we seldom find good veal so I often make this dish using pork or chicken. The same recipe applies to all three, the watch point being not to overcook the meat.
The meat is really the carrier for a deliciously light creamy lemon sauce.
I love the flavour and light acidity of lemon and become very irritated when I order this dish in a restaurant where there is too little lemon.
I feel that parsley compliments lemon and I love the addition capers, but if you are price conscious you may omit them.
A classy finishing touch is slices of golden, buttery lemon slices, but if you are making a quick family meal you may omit these.
In summer and when we are curbing the carbs I sometimes serve this dish with a lovely green salad or with al dente broccoli florets, green beans or courgette.
Traditionally you can serve it with baby potatoes or pasta. It also works well new the latest trendy grains such as quinoa, so feel free to experiment.
If serving a crowd add the veggies to the pasta or baby potatoes and serve a ‘one pot dish’.
You will notice that I used potato flour for this sauce. In bygone days cornflour was sometimes used to stabilize a creamy sauce, but I find potato flour gives a creamier mouthfeel and if the sauce stands for a few hours it will never become watery. There is not enough starch to thicken the sauce, it is merely there to add to the creamy texture.
I doubled this recipe and served this dish to 10 persons after a wine tasting at our home.
We started with wild mushroom bruschetta before we enjoyed our wine tasting.
I could then quickly heat the lemon cream while I cooked the pasta. The chicken, beans and the lemon garnish were cooked ahead of time.
As it is mid-winter we finished with Cape Brandy Tart and coffee.
Cape brandy tart will feature in another blog soon!
