The pasta was a local rye grain trumpets, (‘Campanelle (little bells) in Italian) made by Sfoglini, and were two kinds of radishes, plus the greens of one kind, also spring garlic, dried smoked serrano pepper, olive oil, lemon juice, chopped baby fennel fronds, and some breadcrumbs (taken from a very sturdy loaf of bread) toasted along with a little lemon zest.
I see a bay leaf in a food photograph, or I see a bay leaf mentioned in a recipe, and I think ‘savory’; it’s not actually the definition of savory, it just happens to be the ingredient I most associate with the word.
This pasta was savory.
It started with Mark Bittman’s recipe for ‘Pasta with Savoy Cabbage. I mostly halved the ingredients he specified, and I used a very different pasta from the one he mentions.
[the image of Wagner’s wanted poster is from Wikimedia Commons]
I wasn’t sure this would work out.
I had been hoping to enjoy an evening meal that would be almost like a day off, or at least something close to it, by putting together a simple pasta. I never take these simple pasta breaks too lightly however, because with a little creativity and a very good pasta, they can be pretty awesome (I think one of pasta’s most appealing qualities of pasta is it’s ability to show off other, often very special ingredients by lightening their intensity with its almost neutral presence, making them both more subtle, sophisticated, and enjoyable.
That’s something like what I was hoping for, and I did have a lot of possibilities in the “special ingredients” category, but then I remembered that I had a small head of Savoy cabbage in the back of the crisper, but I also remembered that it had been there for weeks, probably at least a month and a half. I felt now was the time to use it.
The bit of wine left in a bottle of a Pfalz Scheurebe that I would be using had also been hanging around for a while, but not so long as the cabbage, more like a matter of days than weeks; we had opened it and shared it as an aperitif only the week before.
So there was a chance the whole thing might not work out, but I thought the odds were in favor of its success, and so I didn’t share my initial concerns with Barry.
What I didn’t expect was to be almost bowled over by its goodness when we sat down to eat it. Hurrah for cabbage and German wine!
I used Mark Bittman’s recipe for the pasta, following it pretty much to the letter, although I reduced its proportions by 50%. I used a very different pasta from the one he indicates, and I finished it with lovage rather than parsley, and garnished it further with a bit of chive I had just purchased that day.
I had looked at the Union Square Greenmarket phone app while still abed on Monday, and saw I that there would be no fisher presence there that day, probably because the weather over the weekend had kept the boats from going out, so I didn’t head down. I could have used some vegetables, but I knew I’d find something to use with what I had on hand.
I went with an interesting salume and an interesting pasta, and I almost cleaned out my very small supply of greenery in the process.
The pasta was a total improvisation.
We could have ordered a pizza, but I thought it would be good for both of us if I cooked a meal that night, however simple, since I’d been away from the kitchen for 4 days.
We disembarked from Philadelphia at Penn Station, which is only 6 or 7 blocks north of us, at around 9:45 on Sunday night. A little more than hour later we were sitting down to this pretty dinner.
