We could have ordered a pizza, but I thought it would be good for both of us if I cooked a meal that night, however simple, since I’d been away from the kitchen for 4 days.

We disembarked from Philadelphia at Penn Station, which is only 6 or 7 blocks north of us, at around 9:45 on Sunday night. A little more than hour later we were sitting down to this pretty dinner.

• ‘Rye Trumpets’ from our excellent local pasta company, Sfoglini pasta, served with a sauce that began with a little olive oil heated inside a large, heavy, vintage tin-lined copper pan where one or 2 chopped cloves of Keith’s Farm Rocambole garlic were allowed to color (in fact, this time they went a bit beyond “allowed to color”, but I decided the error might produce a more interesting effect), one small-ish chopped red shallot from Norwich Meadows Farm added, along with one section of a dried golden habanada, some sea salt, and a generous amount of freshly-ground black pepper; when the pasta was added to the pan with the sauce, it was stirred over medium heat with some of the reserve pasta water, in order to emulsify the liquid, and the dish was served inside shallow bowls, where it was drizzled around the edges with olive oil, sprinkled with grated Parmigiano Reggiano Hombre from Whole Foods Market and garnished with red micro chard from Two Guys from Woodbridge
• the wine was an Italian (Veneto) white, Pra, Soave Classico ‘OTTO’, 2016, from Flatiron Wines
• the music was the album, ‘Stadtpfeiffer: Music of Renaissance Germany‘, performed by the ensemble, Piffaro