Gosh, this pasta is so good. Then every other Sfoglini product is as well. It’s just that, well, hemp is pretty special, even without the absurd extra-culinary associations someone who grew up in the American no-no land is never going to shake.

• eight ounces out of a box of Sfoglini hemp reginetti, boiled until just before it would have reached the point when it was al dente (about 10 minutes), drained and served with a mushroom sauce composed of roughly 6 ounces of chopped oyster mushrooms from Gail’s Farm in Vineland, New Jersey, cooked until almost soft in a large tin-lined heavy copper pan with a couple tablespoons of rich ‘Kerrygold Pure Irish Butter‘, 2 smallish chopped ‘yellow shallots’ from Norwich Meadows Farm and 2 medium-size cloves of chopped garlic from garlic, also from Norwich Meadows Farm, and 2 teaspoons of chopped thyme from from Trader Joe’s Market on 6th Avenue added to the mushrooms and cooked until fragrant and soft, at which time another 2 tablespoons of butter was added, and, once melted, a tablespoon of coarse stone-ground flour (Oak Grove Mills Whole Wheat Flour from the Blew Family of Oak Grove Plantation, from their stand in the Union Square Greenmarket) introduced and stirred to make something of a paste, before a third of a cup of Noilly Prat Extra Dry Vermouth (I didn’t have an opened bottle of white wine handy) slowly poured into the pan while being slowly stirred with a wooden spoon, cooked until the mix thickens, some chopped parsley from Phillips Farms stirred in, before adding a couple tablespoons remaining from the very rich, complex juices of a chicken entrée prepared the week before, the whole mix seasoned with salt and pepper before the cooked pasta was turned into the pan and mixed with the sauce, the completed dish served in 2 bowls, with some grated  ‘Parmigiano Reggiano Bonat 3’ from Buon Italia sprinkled over the top, a bit of micro red mustard scattered around the edges
• the wine was an Italian (Tuscany) red, Castello di Gabbiano, Chianti Classico, 2015, from Philippe Wines
• the music was François Couperin’s four ‘Concerts Royaux, “..ensemble pieces for a mixed consort of instruments…”, composed in 1714 and 1715 for, obviously, the king (Louis XIV in his very last years), and published in 1722, here performed by Christophe Rousset leading Les Talens Lyriques