{"id":5344,"date":"2015-09-15T02:01:06","date_gmt":"2015-09-15T02:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=5344"},"modified":"2015-09-15T02:01:06","modified_gmt":"2015-09-15T02:01:06","slug":"spaghetti-leek-tomato-prosciutto-red-pepper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=5344","title":{"rendered":"spaghetti, leek, tomato, prosciutto, red pepper"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"spaghetti_leaks_prosciutto_tomatoes\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Lately it looks more and more like I’m trying to break ethnic cooking traditions. \u00a0At least until recently, I\u00a0seemed to be\u00a0entertained enough by (mostly) observing formulas which had been honored by generations immersed in a single tradition. I’m not sure what, if anything my loosening up\u00a0might portend, but I’m going to be watching any developments.<\/p>\n

I have always\u00a0liked working with restraints in areas\u00a0in which\u00a0I have never had formal instruction, partly because I’m a perfectionist. Along those lines,\u00a0I’ve never designed or built a new house, but I know the huge\u00a0pleasure which comes from carefully and fully restoring one.<\/p>\n

In the kitchen, I’ve very slowly become more confident about some\u00a0very modest\u00a0talents, and I’ve always done some improvising, so maybe my cooking\u00a0is just becoming a little more free-range than it has been until now.<\/p>\n

First it was about fooling around with\u00a0a fine fish fillet\u00a0and its contorni<\/a>;\u00a0then it was about playing with most of a classic German plate<\/a>;\u00a0this time it’s about tampering with spaghetti, an particularly\u00a0iconic element\u00a0of Italian cooking.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

It\u00a0was to be a simple pasta dish which would be assembled from\u00a0some ingredients I had lying around the kitchen. \u00a0Normally it would be a simple Italian<\/em>-ish\u00a0<\/em>dish, meaning the list of separate ingredients, if not the ‘recipe’, would at\u00a0least sound<\/em>\u00a0Italian, but I ended up slipping out of\u00a0the tradition, just a bit.<\/p>\n

I included the small amount of red amaranth microgreens I still had sitting on the counter, and also\u00a0a drizzle of an aromatic seasoning blend with\u00a0the proprietary name,\u00a0L’eKama<\/a>, <\/em>which would be\u00a0pretty\u00a0exotic in any Italian kitchen. \u00a0<\/em>The\u00a0amaranth got in largely because it\u00a0was there, but also because it would work as another finishing herb, and because it’s so beautiful. \u00a0The oil and spice mix was added because the fresh red Italian pepper I included turned out to be\u00a0so mild it\u00a0had almost had almost disappeared when I tasted the finished dish; it gave a\u00a0depth to the taste of the dish way\u00a0out of proportion to the amount I added.<\/p>\n