The eggs were beautiful, and they were much larger than quail eggs usually are (they were all double yolk, from young layers, considered good fortune in some cultures, including mine). I had no idea what I was going to do with them, but as soon as I spotted them I knew that I was ready to buy some beautiful large quail eggs.

I decided to make them part of a main course, but I quickly realized that soft boiling 10 eggs (I broke 2 on the way home) was going to be too labor intensive, if not time consuming, so I went for a luscious, savory pasta with fried quail eggs on top, not much unlike spaghetti alla carbonara, without the raw egg thing.

• the eggs came from Feisty Acres; the 8 ounces of pasta was Setaro spaghetti from Buon Italia; 3 pieces of thick Millport Dairy Farm bacon stood in for the classic guanciale; there was a mix of chopped red onions from Norwich Meadows Farm and yellow onions from Phillips Farms; chopped garlic, freshly grated pecorino cheese; butter; fresh local bread chopped, tossed with a little olive oil  and baked on a pan in the oven; and some chopped parsley from Lani’s Farm
• the wine was an Italian/Süd Tirol (Trentino-Alto Adige) white, Alois Lageder Terra Alpina Pinot Bianco Vigneti delle Dolomiti 2018
• the music was Bach’s ‘Goldberg Variations’, performed by Igor Levit