'The Land Where Lemons Grow' by Helena Attlee
If you are infused with an unfulfilled yearning to travel, come to Italy with ‘The Land Where Lemons Grow’ by Helena Attlee. She invites us to explore the landscapes, people and culture of Italy through their deep relationship with the hundreds of varieties of citrus that have become part of the land.
Blending food writing and travel writing, this book is a chronicle of Helena Attlee’s journey to explore the Italian connection with fruits of the citrus family. It was shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year, and won the Guild of Food Writers 'Food Book of the Year' in 2015.
Attlee discovers that it was in Renaissance Florence, in the gardens of the ruling Medici family, that an early grafted citrus acquired the sour and brilliant yellowness we now know today. She takes us on a lemony food journey as we criss-cross Italy through time and space. We are given snippets of recipes from medieval cookbooks and contemporary chefs and homemakers. We taste Gandossi’s Limoncello; take a bite of citrusy cake, the Torta Alla Bergamotto Nosside; wait for a batch of candied peels to be prepared; recreate a recipe for tortoise pie with orange juice from the Middle Ages. We also peek into the global impact of the lemon and its origins in Asia, and the depiction of the citrus in art and sculpture.
A fascinating and unexpected history of the citrus fruit, ‘The Land Where Lemons Grow’ is our pick this February in the Champaca Book Subscription, a monthly book subscription program where we’re reading books about travel. To get this book in your first box, sign up here!
