pigeon toasts; spicy mushroom/pigeon sauce on puntarelle

This meal included many of the same players we enjoyed in a much more ambitious meal the night before. It was a small triumph of home economics,* and the ingredients made it nearly as delicious as they had the first time around.

It was also dramatically easier to put together.

The dinner began with an appetizer which utilized the offal (hearts and livers, in this case) of the 2 pigeons we had enjoyed on Monday.

  • eight slices of a more-than-day-old buckwheat baguette from Runner & Stone Bakery, toasted on top of the stove on my ‘Camp-A-Toaster’, then sautéed in a little olive oil, turning several times, until they were all crispy and succulent, spread with the livers and hearts of two California farmed pigeons from D’Artagnan,  purchased from Frank at O. Ottomanelli & Sons Prime Meat Market, that had been briefly sautéed in a little olive oil inside a medium tin-lined copper skillet after a bit of finely-chopped Keith’s Farm Rocambole garlic and several tiny chopped scallions from Willow Wisp Farm had first been softened, the offal bits removed and finely chopped, a small amount of chopped thyme from Stokes Farm, about a teaspoon of tomato paste, a splash of a dry Oregon Gewürztraminer, sea salt, and freshly-ground black pepper all added to the pan and mixed together, the chopped pigeon innards returned to the pan and stirred with the rest of the ingredients
  • a bit of wild cress from Lani’s Farm, dressed with a very good Sicilian olive oil, from from Agricento, Azienda Agricola Mandranova (using exclusively Nocellara olives) sea salt, and freshly-ground black pepper

* Basically, the only thing in the main, or pasta course, that had not been a part of an earlier meal, or originally purchased to be a part of another meal, was the pasta itself.

There were mushrooms! They had originally been gathered to be a part of a different recipe for squab than the one I ended up using.

  • three quarters of a pound of fresh tagliatelle from Luca Donofrio’s pastificio inside the Flatiron Eataly, cooked for only about one minute, drained, tossed with olive oil and a little of the reserved pasta water, arranged in shallow bowls, topped with a sauce that had begun the day before as the rich liquid in which the pigeons had been braised, now finished with a small amount of chipotle pepper adobo sauce (from a container that had contributed to this years Thanksgiving meal), and further enriched by the addition of 8 ounces of chopped Bulich Mushroom Company shiitake mushrooms that had been sautéed in olive oil until lightly cooked, the mushrooms seasoned with salt, pepper, a little California merlot, and the dish garnished with chopped parsley from S. & S.O. Produce