{"id":4270,"date":"2015-05-13T20:22:21","date_gmt":"2015-05-13T20:22:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=4270"},"modified":"2015-05-13T20:22:21","modified_gmt":"2015-05-13T20:22:21","slug":"orecchiette-con-cime-rabepasta-with-rapini","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=4270","title":{"rendered":"orecchiette con cime di rapa\/pasta with rapini"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/orechiette_con_cime_rabe.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-4276\" src=\"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/orechiette_con_cime_rabe.jpg\" alt=\"orechiette_con_cime_rabe\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I used to prepare this dish as often\u00a0as it might occur to either one of us, but the last time must have been before I began this blog, over six years ago. \u00a0 I&#8217;ve had the package of dry orecchiette (&#8216;little ears&#8217;) in the cupboard for a few weeks, but it was only last night that I could take advantage of\u00a0a\u00a0convergence of this excellent pasta, some spring Greenmarket broccoli rabe, and\u00a0no dinner plans which could forestall our enjoyment of my favorite version of the Puglian favorite,\u00a0<em>orecchiette con cime di rapa<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>It was as delicious as each of us had remembered. \u00a0There was one snag however, although one not related to the taste. \u00a0I have the willful\u00a0habit of wanting to incorporate\u00a0as much of a vegetable as I can when cooking it, and in this case I would have been better advised to discard some of the rapini stems, or at least remove them and cook them\u00a0a little longer than the rest of the greens. \u00a0I&#8217;ve never encountered this problem before with this vegetable, but let&#8217;s just say that in a couple of cases last night the larger pieces\u00a0were more than chewy. \u00a0After we finished dinner\u00a0Barry proffered, &#8220;Stems are the gristle of the vegetable world.&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Twenty-five years ago I discovered the recipe I still use, in the tall volume,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Italy-Beautiful-Cookbook-Lorenza-Medici\/dp\/0067575870\">&#8216;Italy, The Beautiful Cookbook&#8217;<\/a>. \u00a0The book itself is indeed beautiful, as\u00a0are the recipes. \u00a0It&#8217;s also a wonderful tour through a magnificent culture, one with which Barry I paired our <em>actual<\/em>\u00a0Italian tours\u00a0in\u00a0the years after I acquired the book.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>half a pound of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.benedettocavalieri.it\/portfolio-items\/41-orecchiette\/\">Benedetto Cavalieri &#8216;Single Orecchiette&#8217;<\/a> and half a pound of broccoli rabe, bottom stems removed and the\u00a0rest of the vegetable\u00a0roughly chopped, boiled together in a large pot until the pasta was <em>al dente<\/em>, about a ladleful of the pasta water reserved before draining, then tossed into a separate pot in which 3 garlic cloves and half of a dried red chile pepper had been heated until the garlic had colored lightly, everything (including a judicious amount of the reserved pasta water) tossed for a couple of minutes to blend the flavors and the ingredients, before being served, sprinkled on top with half\u00a0of a cup of\u00a0fresh breadcrumbs browned earlier (this time I used some of a\u00a0Balthazar Multi-Grain boule), along with a pinch of salt, in a little olive oil<\/li>\n<li>the wine was an Italian white, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.saladinipilastri.it\/en\/vini_bianchi.php\">Saladini Pilastri Falerio 2013<\/a><\/li>\n<li>the music was\u00a0Ernest Chausson&#8217;s &#8216;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.m.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Po%C3%A8me_de_l'amour_et_de_la_mer\">Po\u00e8me de l&#8217;amour et de la mer<\/a>&#8216;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I used to prepare this dish as often\u00a0as it might occur to either one of us, but the last time must have been before I began this blog, over six years ago. \u00a0 I&#8217;ve had the package of dry orecchiette (&#8216;little ears&#8217;) in the cupboard for a few weeks, but it was only last night &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meals-at-home"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4270\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}