prosciutto, cress; beet fusilli with butter, habanada, sage

It was still a simple meal, even though there were two courses. Also, each could be assembled surprisingly quickly.

  • four ounces of Applegate ‘Naturels’ prosciutto from Whole Foods Market, drizzled with a very good Sicilian olive oil, from from Agricento, Azienda Agricola Mandranova (exclusively Nocellara olives)
  • served with upland cress from Paffenroth Gardens, dressed with the same oil, Maldon Salt, freshly-ground black pepper, and juice from an organic Whole Foods Market lemon
  • slices of a flax seed ‘Armadillo’ from Bobolink Dairy

The primi was as far as we got in courses, although a secondo had never even been contemplated. This pasta had a lot of presence however, and was a bit of an innovation, since it was a beet fusilli, which doesn’t normally appear on Italian menus.

  • eight ounces of cooked Sfoglini beet fusilli heated and stirred in a butter sage sauce composed of 3 tablespoons of Organic Valley ‘Cultured Pasture Butter’ melted in a heavy, high-sided tin-lined copper sauté pan and heated with  a number of fresh sage leaves from from Phillips Farm and my penultimate habanada pepper of the year, from Norwich Meadows Farm, chopped, roughly half of a cup of the reserved pasta liquid added and stirred until the sauce had emulsified, 2 or 3 tablespoons of grated Parmigiano Reggiano Hombre from Whole Foods Market scattered on top once the pasta and sauce had been arranged in shallow bowls
  • the wine was an Italian (Lazio) white, ‘Elephas’ Bianco, Castello di Torre 2016, from Astor Wines
  • the music, in our continuing informal exploration of twentieth-century symphonies, was Bohuslav Martinu’s 1942 Symphony No. 1, Cornelius Meister conducting the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra