“It tastes like musty caramels”, said Henry, who was standing with Reina behind the Greenmarket Regional Grains Project, in reply to my question about the Sfoglini organic red fife blend zucca.

For me that taste morsel was enough of an incentive to purchasing it, and later it would be a sufficient tipoff for deciding on the vegetable I’d combine this artisanal pasta with.

• eight ounces of Sfoglini ‘organic red fife blend zucca’, purchased through the Greenmarket Regional Grains Project stall at the Union Square Greenmarket, cooked al dente, mixed with a sauce in which 2 small-ish pan-grilled Japanese eggplant (sliced 1/2″ thick) from Berried Treasures, then cut into one-inch segments, was combined with one sliced large clove of ‘German Hardneck‘ garlic from Race Farm, which had just been heated in a small separate pan with a small finely-chopped red Calabrian pepper from Campo Rosso Farm, the pasta and sauce emulsified in the emptied pasta pot by stirring with some reserved pasta water, a little lemon juice and zest added just before a generous amount of chopped peppermint from Lani’s Farm was added in, served in the bowls with a garnish of micro purple radish from Windfall Farms

There was a serving of prosciutto and arugula before the pasta, but the dish and the image is now so familiar on this blog that I didn’t want to lead with it, or go into detail once again.

Okay, omitting it altogether also seems wrong, so here it is.

• Applegate prosciutto from Whole Foods, drizzled with a very good olive oil from Campania (Syrenum D.O.P. Peninsula Sorrentina), served with arugula from Alewife Farm, the greens also drizzled with the olive oil, but also with a little lemon juice, and seasoned with salt and pepper, served with slices of ‘Commune’ from Sullivan Street Bakery

• the wine through both courses was an Italian (Piedmont) white, The Piedmont Guy Ercole Monferratu DOC Bianco 2015
• the music was the album, ‘Hard Line’, by h2 quartet