I love the taste of lemon, so when I came upon a recipe for Spaghetti al Limone, it sounded like a perfect dish to try.

The recipe served four, but it looked like it was the sort of food that wouldn’t keep too well once all the ingredients were thrown together, so I decided to scale it back and try to make just one portion.

The recipe called for heavy cream, with only a quarter cup of it for a dish that served four, so dividing that by one fourth, well, as I never stock heavy cream, it didn’t seem to make sense to buy it just for this recipe, so I went in search of a substitute.

And I found one. Butter plus milk. Perfect!

The recipe also called for shallots. For some reason I never use shallots, but that’s no problem as a quick trip to Ninth Street rectified that.

Now I had all the ingredients that I needed, I just had to divide the ingredient portions into quarters.

And then I made a stupid mistake. I melted the butter that was going to partially serve as substitute for the heavy cream and then unthinkingly poured the milk into the melted butter! Which made the butter clump up.

And the recipe was pretty strict about how the ingredients, including both lemon zest and lemon juice, were added to the pasta.

And somewhere along the line I realized I was flirting with disaster, and I began to form plans to as what to make when my Spaghetti al Limone turned into a heap of inedible goo.

Then amazingly, much to my surprise and delight, it turned out pretty good. Pretty, pretty, pretty good. Even if I do say so myself.