It both pains and relieves me to say things are looking up on the home cooking front.
Why pain? Because it reveals we're settling into our cozy little nest and going out less with a wiggly, very active baby on our hands. But at least this baby is on our sleep schedule -- no 7:00 p.m. bedtimes to manage -- meaning we can all go to Campanile tonight.
The relief comes from having our shit together enough to prepare decent meals. (For now, before crawling starts.)
Inspired by the Hollywood farmers' market and cover of the April issue of Food and Wine, we took on orecchiette with greens, using fresh Swiss chard and arugula to stand in for the traditional cime di rape. We ditched the scallion sauce and mascarpone, but took it up a notch with homemade pasta, since it's one of those rare pastas that's always better when made fresh, not dried.
And in another I Heart the Internet moment, we found a bunch of different orecchiette-making demos on You Tube -- the footage coming mostly from Bari, natch. Since it was such a useful tool for rescuing Pascal in a bow tie crisis, why would the site fail us for this purpose?
The flour and semolina pasta recipe came from Marcella, and after some practice H got the shaping movement down.
All the sauce takes is a few cloves of garlic, plenty of olive oil, a couple bunches of greens (because of shrinkage I erred on the side of caution and used a lot more than what most recipes I read call for), dried chili flakes, and lots of Parmigiano and sharp pecorino romano. Then you got your carbs and veggies in one bowl. Pair with a lively Sancerre, and you're good to go.
In sum, a lovely Sunday night meal, even if we ate at 9:30. Glad it wasn't a failure.
Please feel free to share other orecchiette serving suggestions. We're all ears.
Argh! The pun! Clearly the sign of a woman who spent the evening surrounded by Myers brothers...
Posted by: Morganq | March 20, 2007 at 07:53 AM
It's so nice to have you do all of the research for us. It makes our decision making so much easier!! Thanks.
Posted by: MBT Online | July 15, 2011 at 03:11 AM