Chicken Steamed with Fresh Lemon

To the Cantonese, sai ling means “foreign lemon,” and the distinction is made with this particular dish to suggest that it is best made with lemons that come from what they called “Golden Mountain,” or California, rather than the thicker-skinned lemons of Canton.

There are many versions of this combination of chicken and lemon, almost all of them called “lemon chicken.” In most, even in China, chicken is coated and fried and then a thickened yellow lemon-flavored sauce is pou