Looking for an unfamiliar pasta to accompany a few special ingredients, I remembered I had a package of croxetti in the larder. At least as I’ve prepared it in the past, it has, unaccountably, always suggested to me a certain lightness, which was also what I was looking for that night.

The sauce ingredients included some Colameco’s pancetta, very fresh red scallions, an organic lemon, good olive oil, a package of purple micro basil, and an excellent Parmesan cheese.

It was mostly about assembly.

 

• the process involved about 10 ounces of a package of Genovese Alta Valle Scrivia Croxetti from Eataly, followed the basic outline of this simple Epicurious recipe (although with some alternative ingredients, cooking everything for a much shorter time, and simply draining the pasta as I normally do); the other elements, and their sources, were a 4-ounce package of Colameco’s uncured diced Pancetta from Whole Foods, red spring scallions from Hawthorne Valley Farm, juice from an organic lemon form Whole Foods, micro basil from Two Guys from Woodbridge, and Parmesan cheese from Buon Italia
• the wine was an Italian (Tuscany) rosé, Il Rosé di Casanova La Spinetta 2015
• the music was Q2 streaming, very mellow, all evening