Juicing

The average lemon yields 2-½ tablespoons of juice. The maximum amount of juice can be extracted if you roll the lemon beneath the palm of your hand or drop it in hot water for a few minutes. For me, the best squeezer is the wooden cone-shaped lemon reamer. It fits snugly in the lemon half and extracts all the juice down to the pith. Mechanical and electric juicers are far too cumbersome, the plastic varieties are too complicated, and all of them require constant washing up. When I’m in a rush, I take a half of lemon and squeeze it in one hand and filter the juice through the fingers of the other to catch the pits. If I miss here and there, a pit or two won’t kill a recipe.