Crumply, curly things.

It would be something light, to follow a rich dinner the night before. But I didn’t know what I was going to cook until a few minutes before I started, except that it would include one of the interesting dried artisanal pastas we have in our larder (actually, it’s a former closet in our second bedroom). Then I talked to Barry about the relative merits of the other things we we might include in the dish. I soon had a plan, and he saw to an appropriate wine.

• eight ounces of Sfoglini ‘Whole Grain Reginetti’, cooked only barely al dente, added to a large vintage high-sided copper pot in which the sliced white of one early green garlic stem from Phillips Farms had been heated in a little olive oil over a medium flame until it had softened and become fragrant, and, following the pasta, a dozen or more pitted Gaeta olives from Buon Italia in Chelsea Market were tossed in, and a couple handfuls of ‘ruby streak’ mustard from Alewife Farm, a pinch of a crushed (dried) hickory-smoked Jamaican Scotch bonnet pepper from Eckerton Hill Farm, and a bit of freshly-ground black pepper, then almost 3 quarters of a cup of reserved pasta water was added and the mix stirred over high heat for a minute or two, or until the liquid had emulsified, to make a proper sauce, some chopped lovage from Two Guys from Woodbridge mixed in and the pasta arranged inside 2 shallow bowls, sprinkled with some pine nuts that had been browned only a little inside a small seasoned cast Iron pan, and garnished with more kale, plus more chopped lovage, finished with a little olive oil drizzled around the edges
• the wine was an Italian (Tuscany/Chianti) red, Castello di Farnetella Chianti Colli Senesi 2016, from Philippe Wines

• the music was a marathon broadcast of an incredibly rich sequence of recordings of Billie Holiday performing, on WKCR, streaming, on the occasion of her birthday

 

[the image at the bottom, ‘Blue Billie’ 2002, is from LyleAshtonHarris.com]