Lemon Zest

I love to cook, I love to eat.  I love pasta with lemon, chicken with lemon.  Basically, anything with lemon. As a kid I would put lemon on fried rice when it came out as the last dish of a banquet.  My signature move  I'd keep a couple of lemon halves from the crispy fried chicken dish with shrimp chips.  I would douse the chicken with lemon, all over the crunchy skin, ummmmm (but I wouldn't put lemon on the shrimp chips).

Many recipe's call for lemon zest.  How many times have you taken out that stupid "scrapper" to scrub off the peel of a lemon--only to scrape and scrape and scrape and get less than 1 teaspoon?

Now I have a trick.  I actually cut up lemon peel in to tiny, tiny pieces and put it right in to the recipe/ food.  So what if you are eating lemon peel.  The little zesty bitter pieces taste good and are a nice surprise mixed in with the food.  Reminds me of my father eating whole kumquats during Chinese New Year.  Yuck, I could never eat that whole bitter thing, but what else would you do with those but throw them away after they got mushy?  Now I do but I cut them in half first.  Anyway--try the small pieces of lemon bits.