A simple expedient if the larder is nearly empty or if there is little time for assembling a meal from scratch (and especially if confronted with both situations), a package of store-bought filled pasta lying in the freezer is a boon, and it doesn’t have to be routine.  In this case I was lucky to have saved a bit of the juices from yesterday’s braised fennel and tomato.  I also had a ripe and singularly-beautiful green heirloom tomato, some Thai peppers in four colors, and good basil.  Spinach and ricotta-filled ravioli has rarely had it so good.

• Rana spinach and ricotta-filled ravioli from Eataly, sauced with just the right amount of chopped hot yellow Thai pepper heated in some olive oil and joined by the juices remaining from a vegetable braise which had been a part of the previous evening’s meal (the ingredients were fennel, yellow and red heirloom tomatoes, garlic, chiles, lemon juice, and chopped fennel fronds), a sliced green heirloom tomato from Berried Treasures, then all of it finished with torn basil from Gotham Greens at Whole Foods
• the wine was an Italian white, Santa Cristina Umbria 2013