My dearly beloved often cleans out the fridge by making a red sauce with whichever bits and bobs happen to be left over from the past three of four days. So hello, we're in a rut. One of my mini resolutions this year was to get beyond the typical red sauce on pasta. One of our son's favorite things to eat is traditional spaghetti with meatballs which I make with either ground buffalo or lamb, depending on what looks good at the butcher. I don't really know where Ules acquired his loved of this dish, but I guess it's just that it's fun to eat and offers no surprises--no hidden herbs or spices that might make him abandon ship so I decided to make him meatballs and cook something different for us adults.
A couple of nights ago I pulled out a cookbook called Molto Italiano: 327 Italian Recipes to Cook at Home by Mario Batali. (It was one of my best thrift shop finds!) I looked at the pictures for inspiration and hit upon St. Joh's Eve Pasta. What appealed to me was the toasted bread crumbs and sliced almonds on top of the noodles. Then I spotted the Herb Sandwich from Parma with its emerald green mix of cooked spinach and chard. I grabbed some locally made egg noodles we had in our pantry and I began to improvise, sautéeing chopped onions and garlic in olive oil, toasting the almonds and breadcrumbs and cleaning and chopping spinach and curly kale (I would have preferred chard). I also fried up some bacon. Once the greens were cooked I tossed them with the nuts and bread crumbs and some Parmigiano Reggiano and finally the noodles. Crumble the bacon on top and there you have it--an easy way to see green instead of red. I served this with some slices of raw zucchini on the side because that's another one of my mini-resolutions: to have raw fruit or vegetables on every plate we eat. For dessert we had some Brazen Blackberry Mead from Tugwell Creek Winery and fleur de sel caramels from Chocolaterie Nouvelle France.
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