This creamy, lemony pasta is pure comfort

This is the pasta recipe I wish I had shared with you a year ago. Back then it was just easier to continue writing about hyperseasonal dishes and to deny the news and the shock I didn’t want to feel.

It was last spring when I first started this column — around the same time everyone was clamoring for pantry staples like dried pasta, yeast, flour (and toilet paper). Those were signs the world was a way more uncertain place than we thought, and we needed some extra comfort.

A year later, despite feeling much more optimistic, I still want a little comfort. So here I am with just that: a super rich plate of buttery, creamy noodles.

I’m just going to say it; I love butter and I love cream. But rich foods need a contrast to make me feel invigorated and not just wanting to stay on the couch all day — as I did so much last spring. Sometimes that means a vinegary salad or a zippy wine served alongside, but in the case of this recipe it’s chopped whole Meyer lemon added right in the pasta.

Now this isn’t the first time I’ve come at you (and won’t be the last) with a gospel of using a whole lemon in your cooking. For New Year’s, I added it in my souffle recipe. It lifted (figuratively) that dish, which had fats like cheese and butter, too.

In California, we’re lucky to have Meyer lemons widely available right now. If you’re not familiar, they are like the child of a lemon and a mandarin orange. They are extremely fragrant, juicy and slightly less acidic compared to regular lemons. Since they are not really tart, they can be eaten whole as well. I chop the whole lemon into small pieces, folding them into the buttery, creamy sauce spreading sweet, fresh, lemony, bites all the way through.

Now I understand that I just went on for a while about Meyer lemons, but truly, seek them out. If you can’t find them, a regular lemon will work here too — it will be an even brighter, more tart version and still delicious.

Beyond the bright promise of lemon, the sound of a “butter” “cream,” “pasta” and “chicken” dish will probably conjure up visions of pasta alfredo made with sauce from a jar. I’m not sure who to blame for that — “Big Sauce” or a certain olivetheme restaurant?

This pasta is not like that. It looks and tastes like it’s made from scratch because it is! First, I cut skinless, boneless chicken breasts in half lengthwise to make thinner cutlets. Then those cutlets are gently poached in a salted butter broth that creates a base for the sauce. Instead of just chopping the chicken, I shred it into smaller strands that hug the linguine and make it all feel ragulike — and in under 20 minutes.

That buttery broth eventually relies on more butter, cream and all that shredded chicken to give the linguine enough sauce to pool yet cloak without being too heavy or thick. The Meyer lemon is added last so it stays extremely bright, like a lemon should be.

Maybe this pasta was a year late or maybe it’s just on time? I wonder what I’ll say next year.

California spent four years as a leading bulwark against the racism and other prejudices of the Trump administration. Former President Donald Trump and his minions may be gone from the White House, but the poison they spread remains virulent around the land — and California is still fighting the old battles.

Case in point: bias against transgender people, who have become a favored target of legislators in red states. A California law designed to combat this campaign elsewhere is now in the crosshairs of those who wish to narrow the civil rights of this beleaguered group.

The California law, passed in 2016 as AB1887, is now before the U.S. Supreme Court, thanks to a claim by Texas that it infringes on that state’s right to practice as much gender discrimination as it pleases.

AB1887 bars the use of state funds for travel to states that have passed laws nullifying protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression, or that allow discrimination against samesex couples or families or on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.

Texas is one of 12 states that fall into these categories. (The others are Alabama, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Tennessee; Arkansas is plainly fated to join the list.) AB1887 allows exceptions in cases where such travel is necessary to enforce California law, say by auditing a California taxpayer, and for a handful of other reasons.

Texas, whose attorney general, Ken Paxton, has spearheaded at least one other chuckleheaded lawsuit aimed at making life more miserable for the powerless — the case claiming that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional — has asked the Supreme Court to declare AB1887 unconstitutional.

Paxton’s argument is that AB1887 discriminates against Texas and the other states by interfering with their right to pass their own laws. Texas also brought the case, he says, to protect hotels, restaurants and retailers that will lose income because California officials will stay home.

Paxton asserts that the California law is itself an example of religious discrimination, since the Texas laws are designed to protect those who discriminate on the grounds of religious scruples against serving gays or transgender persons. He calls AB1887 a version of economic sanctions that long have been “a basis for war” and says it’s a crossborder attack on “a sovereign function —lawmaking.”

California replies that AB1887 obviously didn’t tie Texas legislators’ hands, since they passed their law after AB1887 was enacted. The California law hasn’t made travel to Texas illegal, merely dictated that the state won’t pay for such trips. Texas in fact is attacking California’s sovereign right — the right to decide how to spend its own money.

As I reported in 2018, gender identity is a perplexing topic for many Americans, and gender reassignment treatment and surgery even more mysterious.

That has opened the door to a spate of discriminatory state laws, most recently in Arkansas. (As often happens, the Arkansas law is rooted in ignorance about the field it purports to regulate, in this case the treatment of transgender youths.)

Texas lined up support for its Supreme Court petition from 16 other red states, which filed a friendofthecourt brief with the Supreme Court. It also acquired the backing of the Trump administration, which filed an amicus brief on Dec. 4, about six weeks before it was ushered out of power.

Technically speaking, this case isn’t quite yet before the court — the Texas filing is a request that it take the case. But the arguments of Texas, the 16 other states and the Trump White House don’t appear to have made this an easy call for the court.

The Texas petition has been on the agenda of the court’s weekly conferences, at which the justices choose which cases to accept, 11 times since last June, without a decision. It’s currently on the agenda, again, for this Friday’s conference.

The Arkansas law, passed on April 6 over Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s veto, is the first to ban genderaffirming medical treatments for transgender minors. Its supporters pitched it as protection for underage patients who might not be capable of making genderaffirming decisions for themselves and therefore could be harmed for life.

But critics, including the pediatric establishment and experts in child and adolescent psychology, say that’s a smokescreen. Putting off treatments once a patient has reached puberty can be devastating for the mental health of youths experiencing gender dysphoria.

It’s appropriate to view the Arkansas law as part of a broader national legislative campaign targeted at transgender youth, led by a Christianright organization called the Alliance Defending Freedom. The ADF has been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an antiLGBTQ hate group.

The tide against this campaign against transgender rights may be turning: President Joe Biden marked the Transgender Day of Visibility, March 31, with a proclamation that celebrated “the achievements and resiliency of transgender individuals and communities” and “the generations of struggle, activism, and courage that have brought our country closer to full equality for transgender and gender nonbinary people in the United States and around the world.”

But securing transgender people full protection against discrimination and ignorance may be a long process. The forces on the other side are potent, and they’re massing in front of statehouse doors all over the country.