{"id":12566,"date":"2017-04-23T00:46:14","date_gmt":"2017-04-23T00:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=12566"},"modified":"2017-04-23T00:46:14","modified_gmt":"2017-04-23T00:46:14","slug":"the-magic-meal-25-years-on-conchiglie-al-forno","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=12566","title":{"rendered":"the ‘magic meal’, 25 years on: Conchiglie al Forno"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Conchiglie al forno<\/em>, with mushrooms, 4 cheeses, cream, radicchio, and fresh sage.<\/p>\n

I prepared this meal for the very first time exactly 25 years to the day before I served it this past Wednesday, and there have been many occasions between.<\/p>\n

We call it ‘the magic meal’, always have.<\/p>\n

The night of April 19, 1992 was the first time I made dinner for Barry. He had very recently been transferred from his employer’s New York office to the one in Seattle, at his request. I was devastated when he told me about it: \u00a0We had only begun to get acquainted, through a few chaste dates. He had always had to go back to the\u00a0office after each of them, which explains\u00a0one of the\u00a0reasons he wanted\u00a0to move out of New York.<\/p>\n

He must have noticed I was upset, so he assured me he’d have to visit\u00a0the New York office occasionally, probably beginning soon after he had settled in on the West Coast. I promised to make him dinner when he did. It was the first time I did; it wasn’t to be the last.<\/p>\n

He didn’t return to his hotel that night.<\/p>\n

The date (both senses) is now one of our 6\u00a0anniversaries. Note: When you don’t believe in marriage, you get to have as many anniversaries as you can get excited about – and remember.<\/p>\n

I picked\u00a0this particular dish because I could prepare it entirely ahead of time (it tastes at least as good reheated on another day), meaning there’s\u00a0nothing to distract\u00a0the cook from visiting with a\u00a0guest (or guests);\u00a0all it needs otherwise is a simple uncooked appetizer and either some fruit\u00a0or a gelato, and the arrangements for neither course will keep the company alone.<\/p>\n

The recipe for the dish is on this site<\/a>. I still have the wrinkled clipping from a copy of the September 16, 1990\u00a0‘New York Times Magazine’, where I first saw it.<\/p>\n

It also appears in a book,\u00a0‘Cucina Simpatica’<\/a>,\u00a0given to me 2 years later by a dear friend with whom I used to share many wonderful meals in Providence and New York. The book was published in 1991 by\u00a0Johanne Killeen and George Germon, who were, as far as I know, also the creators<\/em> of this Lucullan dish. Jacqueline knew I loved the authors’ wonderful Providence restaurant, as she did, but did not know at the time how they had brought Barry and I together.<\/p>\n

Here is the pasta inside the baking\u00a0dish, just as it came out of the oven:<\/p>\n

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