{"id":5819,"date":"2015-10-26T05:48:19","date_gmt":"2015-10-26T05:48:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=5819"},"modified":"2015-10-26T05:48:19","modified_gmt":"2015-10-26T05:48:19","slug":"fiori-di-zucca-ravioli-yum-yum-peppers-oregano","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=5819","title":{"rendered":"fiori di zucca ravioli, yum yum peppers, oregano"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

I love zucchini flowers, but I refuse to do any deep frying at home, so most of the time I have to sit on the sidelines when I encounter the ingredient in a market. \u00a0That’s why I was so excited last week when I came\u00a0across Luca Donofrio<\/a>\u00a0latest fresh pasta innovation at\u00a0Eataly, fiori di zucca<\/em>-filled\u00a0ravioli. I had to put off a purchase that day, but resolved to return when I did not already have\u00a0a commitment to ingredients for a different\u00a0meal.<\/p>\n

Late Sunday afternoon I braved the crowds of tourists (and home cooks) inside that spectacularly successful food emporium, and managed to bag (box) some of the pasta.<\/p>\n

I didn’t want to upstage the star ingredient, so I thought seriously about how I would ‘dress’ the pasta\u00a0with a sauce. Most of the decision was made\u00a0as\u00a0soon as I spotted a very small plastic bag\u00a0inside of our\u00a0refrigerator of what I believed were two ‘yum yum’ peppers. \u00a0I had thought they had disappeared earlier within a mix of tiny parti-colored bell peppers<\/a>. \u00a0If they actually were yum yums, they were the peppers the young man at the Union Square market stall had\u00a0described as sweetly flavorful, but when I tasted a tiny sliver of one, raw, I decided they should not be added without some caution (they were far more\u00a0hot than sweet, at least until introduced into the sauce and the ravioli, but they were certainly flavorful. \u00a0They\u00a0made\u00a0the dish far more sophisticated than it would have been otherwise, and the taste of the\u00a0fiori di zucca<\/em> survived.<\/p>\n

You never know about peppers, I’ve learned, or at least\u00a0I<\/em>\u00a0never know about peppers.<\/p>\n

NOTE: The image above does not include the freshly-ground black pepper and grated\u00a0Parmesan cheese added to the top of the pasta after we had tasted the dish, and after I snapped the picture.<\/p>\n