Bring on the Orient

There are plenty of ways to dress up chicken to make it have a Chinese flavor. Chinese dishes often feature the popular sweet and sour flavor combination. This is easily adapted to lemon chicken recipes. One option is to use chicken breasts and cut them into bite sized pieces. These can be breaded, if desired and baked or fried. Then, a simple sweet and sour sauce is made with lemons and brown sugar or honey. This can be served with a variety of sides or fillers, such as Chinese styles vegetables like broccoli or green onions. It’s is also extremely delicious when served over rice.

Meld With Mediterranean Flavors

Another really nice variation to try is a bit of a Mediterranean flavor. Mint is widely used in this type of cuisine and pairs very nicely with chicken and lemon. To make a simple lemon mint chicken salad, first grill some chicken breasts. You will combine lemon juice and zest, chopped mint, olive oil and basic seasoning to make a delicious dressing. This is amazing served over baby greens and makes a lovely presentation for company or special occasions.

Everybody Loves Italian

The flavors that are traditionally associated with Italian food pair wonderfully with chicken. Lemon can easily be combined with garlic, basil, oregano and other herbs to make a very classic dish. Poultry is very common is Italian cuisine and is perfect for many variations. You are really only limited by your own creativity. Lemon and herbs can easily be added to flavor a distinctive marinara. Of course, no Italian dish is complete without pasta, so use that as your side for any Italian versions.

Appropriate Occasions to Serve

Unlike some other dishes, lemon chicken is suited to many different occasions. There is really no indication that any culture prefers this dish over another for any particular event. However, almost all traditions have some variation when it comes to a chicken dish that incorporates lemon. They may be listed under different names and include various added ingredients. However, you can learn to recognize a recipe as a variation with a bit of reading between the lines. Lemon chicken is ideal for almost any event where you need a dish that people are sure to appreciate. The dish is also great for when you want to display a nice presentation as a hostess.

Perfect a Few Favorites

Most cooks are able to prepare meals quicker and more affordable if they perfect a dozen or so recipes. With lemon chicken recipes, try a variety when you are beginning to play with the dish. You can then narrow down your family’s favorites and perfect and adapt them to your particular tastes and style. You will also want to make sure that you are using ingredients that are easy to find. While it’s one thing to search out a difficult ingredient for an extremely special event, it won’t work well as use this option as a family favorite on a regular basis. Also, you may want to repeat the process every few months or so in order to maintain interest in the menu. Designate certain menu days to try out new recipes and find new favorites. This will ensure that you not only keep your menu interesting, but also that most of the meals you make are tried, true and easy to prepare.

Frequently, pizza comes into a region along with a group of Italian immigrants. Although the pizza at first remains within the community of Italians who brought it into that region, as the Italians become more integrated into the community, so does their food. Generally pizza acquired within the core of Italian immigrants is still nearly traditional, but the pizza that starts to spread into the rest of the country acquires special flavors and topping which reflect the established cuisine of the culture. Here are some examples:

In the United States, pizza has developed many different regional forms, owing mostly to the wide and continuing impact of Greek and Italian immigrants in American culture. Some of these variations are so different as to only vaguely resemble the original Neapolitan dish. Anyone who has travelled much in American will be familiar with “New York Style” pizza, as opposed to “Chicago Style,” deep-dish, thin-crust, or other varieties. Frequently American foods such as bacon double cheeseburgers, BBQ chicken, chili cheese dogs, or other foods will find their way onto a pizza in the state.

One surprising locale where pizza has really taken root is in Pakistan. It was introduced there as recently as 1993 by Mr. Manzar Riaz, who opened the country’s first pizza place. Pizza Hut also moved into Pakistan in the same year, perhaps sensing the same burgeoning desire for pizza consumption that tipped off Mr. Riaz. The impact of pizza in Pakistan has not been as great as in India, though; it is a popular and well-known dish in provinces like Kashmir, Sindh, and Punjab, but it basically impossible to find in Baluchistan and the creatively-named North-West Frontier Province. Despite its inability to crack into those coveted other regions, Pakistan’s pizza sales are second in volume only to sales in the Unites States. In fact, Pakistan is home to the world’s largest Pizza Hut which as seating for more than five thousand people, if you can imagine such a thing.

Despite the enormous volume of pizza sales in Pakistan, and the thousands of Pakistanis who apparently sit down to eat pizza in even one restaurant, Sao Paulo, Brazil still has the stones to call itself the “Pizza Capital of the World.” This isn’t too a crazy a claim, considering that 1.4 million pizzas are consumed in there every single day. As is common when Italians immigrants introduce pizza, the dish was not available in Brazil outside of Italian communities until the 1950s. As it has spread out and developed its own new Brazilian flair, pizza has become increasingly popular throughout the country. Generally, though, pizza there is still pretty close to the traditional Neapolitan fare, with thicker, more substantial dough, and frequently having no tomato sauce at all.

One of the most heart-warming pizza success-stories is playing out even as we speak in Australia. You may not have known this, but a significant portion of the Australian population is descended from Italy, so I guess you could say they have pizza in their veins, although not literally of course as this would cause an extremely painful and deadly condition. Because the Australians have so much in common with those of Italian descent, the classic, traditional varieties are available in Australia, but there is also an Aussie style pizza which has bacon and egg on it and sometimes also prawns. A couple of decades ago the “gourmet pizzas” began to be popular in Australia, with smoked salmon, dill, kangaroo meat, and other goofy Australian thins on top of them, but probably not boomerangs, let’s be honest.

Pizza is just one of many foodstuffs with a long and storied history which has spread across the world and changed as it went, but it is a very interesting case. It shows how a variety of different people are able to take the same concept and adapt it to their own unique preferences.