mushroom pasta, wild garlic, pepper, olives, lovage, cilantro

Dinner for two, assembled quickly last night (May 4) after a long day at an art fair.

  • between one and two tablespoons of olive oil heated slowly inside a large high-sided tin-lined heavy copper pan with a crushed piece of dark habanada pepper, and a handful of wild garlic bulbs from Lani’s Farm, the garlic not allowed to cook fully, seasoned with sea salt and freshly-ground Tellicherry pepper, joined by half a dozen or so halved Kalamata olives olives from Whole Foods Market and a handful of pine nuts which had been slowly heated and browned earlier inside a small well-seasoned cast iron pan, a 10-ounce package of frozen Rana portobello-mushroom-and-ricotta-filled ravioli from Eataly, boiled inside a large pot of well-salted water for 2 minutes and drained, slipped into the copper pan and mixed well with the sauce, everything stirred together over a low flame, along with some of the reserved pasta water (in order to emulsify the liquid), mixed with chopped lovage from Windfall Farms, the pasta then arranged inside 2 shallow bowls, some olive oil drizzled on top and around the edges, the dish finished with a little micro coriander from Windfall Farms
  • the wine was a California (Amador) red, made with the Portuguese Touriga grape, Ana Diogo-Draper Amador Touriga 2015, from Naked Wines
  • the music was Franz Schmidt’s Symphony No. 2, Semyon Bychkov conducting the Vienna Philharmonic