Sunday pasta, winter variant.

Thanks to the radish.

• six or seven ounces of French breakfast radishes from Eckerton Hill Farms cooked inside a large antique copper pot in a little butter and olive oil over a medium-high flame until they were tender but still retained some bite, removed and reserved, then 6 or 7 sliced tiny Rocambole garlic cloves from Keith’s Farm added and heated until fragrant and mostly softened, along with a small amount of dried peperoncino Calabresi secchi, the washed and drained tender radish greens stirred in (where they wilted almost immediately), followed by 8 ounces of a really great local pasta, Sfoglini’s whole grain reginetti, cooked until only barely al dente, along with much of a cup of reserved pasta cooking water, the mix stirred constantly until the liquid had emulsified, the radishes returned to the pot, and a tablespoon or more of juice from an organic Chelsea Whole Foods lemon and a fairly generous amount of freshly-ground black pepper tossed in, the pasta arranged inside 2 shallow bowls, sprinkled with toasted fresh breadcrumbs (half a cup of Philadelphia’s Lost Bread Company’s ‘table bread’, which is available at the Union Square Greenmarket on Wednesdays, toasted until golden in 3 tablespoons of olive oil, with a teaspoon of lemon zest and half a teaspoon of red pepper flakes mixed in after)
• the wine was an Italian (Sardinia/Ogliastra), white, Cardedu, Vermentino di Sardegna ‘Nuo’ 2016, from Flatiron Wines [more about the wine here]
• the music was Verdi’s 1859 tragic opera, ‘Un Ballo In Maschera’, Georg Solti conducting the National Philharmonic Orchestra, with a cast including Luciano Pavarotti, Kathleen Battle, Margaret Price, and Christa Ludwig