coppa dolce, sunflower sprouts; whole wheat pasta, 2 kales

No, you’re not seeing double. Only a few days ago we had begun a different meal with an antipasto using almost all the same ingredients as those seen above, so it was probably a good thing that I led that post with the Marx Brothers rather than this wonderful salume.

The only variation, and because of the repeat it was a conscious one, was in the greens that accompanied what my parents always called “cold cuts.”

  • less than 2 ounces of Giorgio’s coppa dolce from Flatiron Eataly, drizzled with a bit of Trader Joe’s unfiltered Italian Reserve extra virgin olive oil
  • a small handful of Windfall Farms’ crunchy sunflower sprouts, also drizzled with a little oil
  • slices of the excellent ‘table bread’ from Philadelphia’s Lost Bread CO ((half organic bread flour, half fresh milled whole grain wheat, spelt, rye, malted barley, plus water and salt)

I knew I was going to follow the coppa with a pasta course, but at first I was totally at sea about what kind it would be. It didn’t help that I had an embarrassment of riches with all the ingredients I had on hand. Then I remembered that I still had a small container in the refrigerator with stems from the delicious purple-green kale I had served the day before this.

After that, and deciding on a full, earthy-flavored local pasta, I just layered a few things around it and we ended up with the bowl in the picture above.

  • eight ounces of Sfoglini ‘Whole Grain Reginetti’, cooked only barely al dente, added to a vintage large copper pot in which a sauce had been prepared heating a sliced medium ‘yellow shallot’ from Windfall Farms and the chopped stem sections of a few small celery stalks from Philipps Farms in a little olive oil over a medium flame until both had softened and become fragrant, adding the braised handful of stems of of some delicious, sweet, slightly purple flat kale from Norwich Meadows Farm that had not been cooked with the leaves when they were prepared on Friday night, a dozen pitted Gaeta olives from Buon Italia in the Chelsea Market, and a pinch of a crushed (dried) hickory-smoked Jamaican Scotch bonnet pepper from Eckerton Hill Farm, generously seasoned with freshly-ground black pepper, the mix stirred over high heat along with almost 3 quarters of a cup of reserved pasta water for a minute or so, or until the liquid had emulsified, some of the celery stalks’ roughly-chopped leaves mixed in and the pasta arranged inside shallow bowls, sprinkled with some homemade bread crumbs browned a little in a bit of olive oil, garnished with some more kale, this time some wispy micro red Russian kale from Windfall Farms, and finished with a little olive oil drizzled around the edges