♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - This week on Milk Street, we travel to the Amalfi region of Italy to learn the fine art of cooking with lemons.

We start with a very simple recipe, spaghetti with lemon pesto that redefines the nature of pesto.

And then we do a lemon and shrimp risotto that is finished with egg and just a splash of cream.

Finally, we make a simple Amalfi-style lemon cake, dressed with a lemon simple syrup.

Please stay tuned as we explore the lemony recipes from Amalfi, Italy.

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♪ ♪ - One of my favorite vacations with my kids is always hiking, and years ago we went to Ravello, this is northeast of Amalfi, just south of Naples, of course, in Italy.

And we walked around for a few days in the valley of ironworks, which is this wild, mountainous terrain.

Obviously it's very rocky.

I looked down at the valleys that are all terraced, it's lovely.

The two things you see a lot of are olive groves, and you see sfusato amalfitano, which are these huge lemons the size of softballs.

Now they make limoncello out of it, but they also make a lot of other things.

And it turns out that the other things were really interesting.

We're talking about recipes now.

We visited Giovanna Aceto and we made three recipes with her.

Each of them uses lemons.

Now the first is really simple, it's a spaghetti with lemon pesto.

Not only is it simple, but it redefines what a pesto is.

And it's not just basil, and pine nuts, and parmesan, and garlic and oil, it's something quite different.

So we have to zest four lemons, we've done two.

♪ ♪ So now we're gonna do something a little strange, we're gonna take half of these peels, we're gonna put them in the water, and we're gonna cook them for a couple of minutes with a teaspoon and a half of salt.

And we're gonna take a teaspoon of sugar, that's going to flavor the water.

We'll take them out before we add the pasta.

So when you cook the pasta, of course the pasta absorbs some of that lemon flavor.

So it's been two minutes, you can see the water has already started to turn a color and we're gonna get rid of these, because if you cook the pasta with the lemon peel, it would be hard to get the peel out.

You'll notice we don't have a lot of water.

Most recipes take a pound of pasta in four quarts of water.

We have half as much water, two quarts.

The reason for that, and we do this often here at Milk Street, and they do it often in Italy, you want a lot of starch in the water.

We're gonna reserve a bunch of that water at the end and some of that's going to go into the pasta with the pesto to make a sauce, and you want a starchy water for that.

So now we're going to cook the pasta and that's a pound... and we'll cook it just shy of done, al dente, because we're gonna finish cooking this with the pesto and a little reserved cooking water.

So this is not your typical pesto, right?

'Cause you need an herb of some kind like basil, parsley, whatever.

So we have nuts and we have cheese and we have olive oil and salt, but we're using lemon zest instead of, let's say, the basil, and then we have half a cup of slivered blanched almonds, and we have an ounce of parmesan.

And because it's lemon, we're gonna put just a teaspoon of sugar in and a little bit of salt and pepper.

So we're gonna give this eight to ten seconds.

And now we're gonna add the olive oil, a third of a cup of olive oil.

You probably want to use a pretty good olive oil for this, not a cooking oil.

And it won't be perfectly smooth.

So that's the pesto.

Now, this sfusato amalfitano, those big Italian lemons, they're a little milder, a little sweeter than ours, and that's why we add a little bit of sugar, just to balance this out.

Now we'll finish up the pasta, and we'll reserve some of the water, and then we'll finish up the pasta with the sauce.

The pasta is ready to go, as is the pesto.

So let's add that to the pot.

♪ ♪ So we reserved some of that very starchy... you can... look at the water, it's good pasta, 'cause a lot of starch came out, so we use about half of it.

♪ ♪ And let me start to toss.

You want to toss this so you get a little bit of an emulsion going and you get it really evenly coated.

And since this pesto-- it's kind of thick, take your time, make sure it gets coated nicely.

There we go.

So now we have some chives, we'll add that to the pot.

♪ ♪ So add just a little bit of salt, and just a little bit of pepper.

So that-- I'm gonna give it one last toss.

♪ ♪ Okay, I think we're good.

So now it's time to serve it.

We'll just twirl it on a large fork, like that.

Nice twirl of pasta.

♪ ♪ And then we'll just put a little parmesan on it-- or a lot of parmesan on it.

♪ ♪ Okay.

So one of the things I like to do as well is drizzle at the end with oil, even finishing a marinara sauce that way.

But on finished pasta, it's always nice.

♪ ♪ So from Amalfi, a very, very simple spaghetti recipe with lemon pesto-- redefines what a pesto is.

It's simple and it has bright, bold flavor.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - We learned about this intensely flavored risotto de limone from Giovanna Aceto in Amalfi, Italy.

The interesting thing about this risotto is we finish it with a combination of egg yolk and a little bit of cream, which lends this really rich, velvety texture and taste.

We all know that risottos start with a good, flavorful broth.

We actually make a broth out of the shells from the shrimp that we cook into it, as well as some strips of lemon zest.

And then on top of that, to make sure we layer that nice bright flavor of lemon throughout the recipe, we add in both lemon juice, as well as beautifully fragrant lemon zest.

Just so that way, that flavor stays nice and bold.

Using a Y-style peeler, go ahead and peel off strips of lemon zest about one inch wide.

And typically when you zest these, you want to make sure you don't get any of the white pith underneath because that is what gets everything bitter-- not what we're going for.

♪ ♪ Now, aside from peeling off little strips of zest from one lemon, take a rasp-style grater and grate the entire other lemon, and set those both aside.

Once you have all of your lemon zest all set, go ahead and cut them both in half and get about a quarter cup of juice out of them.

♪ ♪ With that out of the way, we could go ahead and get started with our broth.

I'm gonna throw into this medium saucepan that's been set over medium heat, two teaspoons of olive oil.

And once that's shimmering, we can go ahead and throw in our shrimp shells.

Now there's so much flavor going on in the shells, we don't want to lose any of that and we really want to bolster that seafood flavor in our broth.

So we'll cook these down in the oil until they're pink, and that should only take about one to two minutes.

♪ ♪ Now that our shrimp shells are nice and pink, we can go ahead and throw in five cups of water along with those lemon strips that we've just peeled.

♪ ♪ Finally, to amplify all these flavors, just a half a teaspoon of salt is all it takes.

So now that we have everything in the pan, I've brought it up to a simmer over medium heat.

At this point I'm going to go ahead and lower it down to low, since I see quite a bit of bubblage, and then we'll pop a lid on it.

So that way it can cook for about ten minutes, to really infuse the broth with that lemon and shrimp flavor.

♪ ♪ I finished my broth and strained it through a fine mesh strainer set over a medium bowl and then pressed down on the solids, just to get all of that extra goodness out.

All that broth, though, went right back into the saucepan and I currently have it over low just to keep warm for this next step.

From here we can start on our risotto.

And that starts in this large eight court, which I am now going to throw in about a tablespoon of oil.

♪ ♪ And we'll have this pot set over medium-high heat.

Now, once my oil starts to shimmer, I want to go ahead and throw in the onions.

Here, I have one small onion that's been minced down and we want to cook this through until it's softened and that's about five to six minutes.

♪ ♪ I'm also going to throw in just a quarter-teaspoon of salt.

(sizzling) ♪ ♪ My onions are nice and softened but they're not too browned.

In fact, we want to avoid getting too much additional browning here because we don't want this risotto to come off as sweet.

Now, here, I have one cup of arborio rice, which is a short grain rice that has a nice amount of starch to it, which will give this risotto its familiar body.

We're going to cook this along with the onion for about one to two minutes or until each granule has some transparency around the edges.

Once it goes in the pot, go ahead and give everything a stir just to ensure that each granule is coated in a little bit of oil and it could jumpstart that cooking process.

♪ ♪ My rice has begun to show signs of that transparency right around the edges.

And if you take a closer look, you can see that there's still that little bit of white in the center.

That's what we're looking for.

It's at this point that we could go ahead and add in half a cup of dry white wine, and we want to cook that through until it's mostly evaporated.

♪ ♪ Over medium-high heat, that evaporation shouldn't take too much time at all.

But, you do want to cook the alcohol out because this recipe should not be boozy in the end.

Another good indicator that you've made it is the sizzling will get significantly louder.

That just means more of the moisture has in fact cooked off and you're ready to move on to the next step of this, which is adding in that broth that we worked on.

We're going to be adding in three cups of broth and allowing that to cook through, stirring all the way.

♪ ♪ Once the liquid is in the pan, just like any other risotto, you want to keep it stirring and that's going to help develop all those starches and give this risotto its body.

Now, all of this liquid will cook down in about ten to 12 minutes, but keep an eye out for any trails left behind your spatula when you scoop through.

That's a really good indicator that you can move on.

So we could go ahead and add in the remaining two cups of broth and we'll cook it through for ten minutes, stirring all the way through.

♪ ♪ The liquid's been cooking down for ten minutes and the best way to figure out if you're ready to move on is to taste it.

Grab a small bite of the rice and just see if it's tender and cooked through.

The rice is fairly tender, so it's at this point that I can remove it entirely from heat and we're gonna throw in my shrimp.

Now the residual heat from this risotto is going to cook the shrimp through in about five to seven minutes.

As long as you keep the lid on, that lid really helps hold all that heat inside.

♪ ♪ If you open up your pot and find that it still needs a little bit more time, set it over very low heat, just to bring that temperature back up.

We can go ahead and finish the risotto off with that interesting combination of egg yolk and heavy cream that I mentioned earlier.

Now here I have one large egg yolk and to that I'll be adding in two tablespoons of heavy cream.

And this is going to help mitigate the heat of this risotto from cooking the egg immediately, as soon as it hits the pot.

We want this to thicken the risotto, not cook into a hard egg yolk.

♪ ♪ So from here we could go ahead and add in that cream mixture.

♪ ♪ In addition to that, we are going to layer in that bright, bold lemon flavor in the form of that quarter cup of lemon juice we collected earlier, as well as that lemon zest that we got from that one other lemon.

And finally we're also throwing in half a cup of roughly chopped basil.

And all we gotta do now is stir everything through.

♪ ♪ And now just to add a little bit more lusciousness, we'll add in one tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil.

And that's that-- we can go ahead and eat.

♪ ♪ I want to top this off with just a quick hit of olive oil, just to bring out the richness.

And that is that, a lemon and shrimp risotto with fresh basil.

Pretty easy.

♪ ♪ - Torta al limone is a simple lemon cake found throughout the Amalfi region of Italy.

We learned how to make it from Giovanna Aceto on her family's Amalfi lemon farm.

Now when I say simple, don't think boring.

This cake has maximum lemon flavor.

It's the most lemony cake I've ever had.

Now Giovanna uses the Amalfi lemon, which is sweeter than it is tart.

But lucky for us, we can use just plain old supermarket lemons.

Just add a little bit of extra sweetness.

So let's get started with the lemons, you can't have a lemon cake without lemons.

Now we're gonna use not just lemon juice, but zest, and we do that for a couple of reasons.

Lemon zest holds up better to heat, so in the oven it's not going to dull the flavor.

You can add a whole lot more lemon zest than lemon juice without throwing off the balance of the cake.

I always zest right into the bowl.

You want to capture all of the oils from the zest in the bowl, rather than on the counter.

And I don't typically measure zest.

I think about one medium lemon is about a tablespoon.

We're looking for two tablespoons here.

I've already got one lemon's worth in the bowl.

And I just kind of do it this way and capture the lemon zest on the top, so I can see how much I've got.

Smells so good.

♪ ♪ I'm gonna say that's about a tablespoon.

And then I'm gonna go ahead and juice these lemons, I already did the one I'd already zested.

And we're looking for three-quarters of a cup of lemon juice.

We're gonna make a lemon simple syrup that we're gonna pour over the cake after we bake it.

That's going to add some really nice lemon flavor, but it's also going to keep the cake really moist.

♪ ♪ That looks good.

So that three-quarters of a cup of lemon juice, I'm gonna put in a saucepan along with a cup of sugar.

♪ ♪ Mix that together a little bit.

So I'm just gonna heat this over medium-high.

All that we're looking for is for the sugar to dissolve here.

We don't need to boil it, we don't need to reduce it.

We're going to keep that clean lemon flavor, but this sweetness is where we're going to compensate for those sweet Amalfi lemons.

You can kind of tell when this changes, it goes from sort of cloudy and grainy to kind of clear and translucent.

I always just kind of run my finger along the spoon and check for any graininess, which there is none.

So I'm gonna pour it into a measuring cup.

You should have about a cup and a quarter of the syrup.

♪ ♪ Okay, so now we can start on the batter.

This is a really simple Bundt cake.

We've got two cups of all-purpose flour in our bowl.

I'm gonna add two teaspoons of baking powder and a half a teaspoon of table salt.

Just gonna whisk these together.

♪ ♪ Okay, now we can set that aside.

I'm gonna go back to the mixer where I zested those lemons and add a cup of sugar.

And I'm gonna turn this on and allow these two things to beat together.

All of that oil from the lemon zest is gonna coat the sugar.

That's going to make sure we get lemon flavor throughout the cake.

♪ ♪ This is 14 tablespoons of softened salted butter.

And I'm just gonna cream this together.

It's going to take about three to five minutes till it's really light and fluffy.

♪ ♪ Okay, this looks good.

I'm just gonna scrape this down before I add the eggs.

We've got three large eggs.

You want to make sure these are at room temperature and add them one at a time and allow them to incorporate before you add the next one.

♪ ♪ Okay, I'm gonna give it another scrape down.

Now, a Bundt cake lies somewhere between a pound cake and a layer cake in terms of texture.

So you want it to be sort of a compact crumb, so it holds up to the shape of the Bundt pan, but you also want it to be really nice and tender and light.

So I'm gonna turn the mixer onto medium and let that aerate for about three minutes or so, that's gonna incorporate air into that and make it really nice and light.

♪ ♪ Okay, that looks good.

Now you might notice it's a little bit curdled.

Don't worry-- when you have a batter that starts with a lot of liquid and fat, it can curdle.

Once you add the dry ingredients in, it'll be fine.

So I've got the dry ingredients I mixed together earlier, and a half a cup of whole milk and we're just gonna go back and forth starting and ending with the dry ingredients.

♪ ♪ Okay, I always like to finish by hand, just in case there's anything at the bottom of the mixer that did not get mixed in.

♪ ♪ So I can load this into the Bundt pan.

One really important point here is to prep your Bundt pan.

If you have baking spray, which is cooking spray with added flour, spray very generously, making sure you're getting into all the nooks and crannies.

If you don't have that, you can make a paste with melted butter and flour and brush it on with a pastry brush.

But, again, make sure you're being very generous and you're getting in all of the nooks and crannies.

It'd be really tragic if your cake stuck.

♪ ♪ Just gonna smooth this out with a spatula, mostly just to make sure everything is even, so the cake bakes evenly.

So I'm gonna put this into a preheated 350-degree oven on the middle rack, bake it until it's golden brown, and a toothpick inserted about two inches from the edge comes out clean.

That should take about 35 to 40 minutes.

♪ ♪ So the cake has been out for about ten minutes.

You want to set a timer for ten minutes.

You don't want it to cool too long or the simple syrup will not absorb.

You want the cake to still be warm when you pour it on.

Now, the other thing that is non-negotiable is you have to go around and poke the cake with a toothpick, about every half inch or so, and you want to poke all the way down to the bottom of the cake, which will then be the top of the cake.

Now, this seems a little bit finicky for a simple cake, and I understand, but I'm going to confess that I made this one time and I did not poke it enough, and it did not soak in as well.

So it's a really critical step in order to get that syrup throughout the cake.

You don't have to do a special pattern, but you do want to try to poke it as much as you can.

Okay.

(exhales) So I'm gonna add half the syrup, let that soak for about five minutes or so, just until it's fully absorbed, and then we'll add the second half of the syrup.

♪ ♪ So this is absorbed already, so I'm gonna add the second half of the syrup.

♪ ♪ So I'm gonna let this cool for about 30 minutes.

Again, you want to set your timer for this one.

You don't want to cool it too long or it might stick in the pan, especially with that sticky syrup.

And then I'll turn it out, we'll come back, and we'll eat the cake.

So here is our perfect lemon Bundt.

I love a Bundt cake 'cause it tells me where I'm supposed to cut it, it has these little ridges for me.

Smells really good.

♪ ♪ So you can see it has a really nice compact crumb, but it's gonna be really light and tender.

So, Amalfi-style lemon cake from the Amalfi coast of Italy-- a simple lemon Bundt cake with tons of lemon flavor.

You can get this recipe and all of the recipes from this season of Milk Street at MilkStreeTV.com.

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- Funding for this series was provided by the following.

- That meal.

You sautéed, you seared, and you served, cooking with All-Clad, bonded cookware designed, engineered, and assembled in the U.S.A. for over 50 years.

All-Clad-- for all your kitchen adventures.

- Ladies and gentlemen, we'd like to be the first to welcome you to Tel Aviv... - Welcome to Oaxaca's airport.

- Welcome to Beirut.

♪ ♪ (man speaking Hebrew) - (speaking world language) - Bonjour, je m'appelle Chris.

- We call it supa kanja.

It's the word for gumbo.

♪ ♪ - Christopher, you have to make the authentic, original cotoletta alla Bolognese for me.

♪ ♪ - So this is the Eduardo García blender.

- This is the no electricity.

♪ ♪ - Next is dessert.

- That is really good.

♪ ♪ I notice when you cook sometimes, you add a little bit of something, and then you just put the whole bowl in.

- I like to be generous with my food.

Generosity is important in cooking.

- That's true.

♪ ♪ - Can start building bridges, and food is definitely a perfect common ground.

♪ ♪ - This is a generational thing.

It's, it's something that you inherit.

♪ ♪ - Yeah, that was great.

(woman speaking Mandarin) - What was this for?

What did she say?

- You get one more chance.

- Salute.

- How is it?

He's speechless.

- I'm speechless.

That's so good.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪