Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Ravioli

Sometimes having nothing easy in the fridge can be a jumping-off point for a much better meal than the standard go-to things that I grab or make by default. In this case, as with Easter breakfast, a couple of eggs saved my bacon. I mixed up some pasta dough, and while it was chilling in the fridge I took Tuscan kale, pine nuts, feta, garlic, and lemon juice and spun them all in the food processor for a bit. We're running low, but there is still some guanciale in the house (got to order more cheeks and hang them up for summer) and I minced and crisped it in a pan then folded the little lardons into the kale spread.

Milo helped me roll out the dough, with parsley in the top sheet, and thus were ravioli fabricated from next to nothing. For the sauce, I grabbed a jar of our cherry tomato purée from the pantry- it's yellow because the bulk of our crop come canning were yellow and orange- and enhanced the velvety goodness with a knob of butter, olive oil, a smashed clove of garlic, and herbs, then let it simmer to thicken. Gorgeous sweet sauce, slightly bitter yet pork-bolstered filling, toothsome pasta: the elements all played well with others. And to finish, another salad of baby greens from the garden. Plus, we got to enjoy this delicate dish with the rest of both the Sancerre and the Sangiovese, which is how life should be.

5 comments:

Thistlemoon said...

Beautiful presentation and I agree about the creativity of making something off the fly!

Welcome to The Foodie Blogroll! :)

Brooklynguy said...

honestly, just gorgeous. looks like the stuff people wait on line for (myself included) at a place called al di la in brooklyn.

i imagine that these would have been beautiful with a simple brown butter too - so many things happening in the filling.

thanks for the food porn.

peter said...

Jenn: Thanks! Fewer (good) ingredients= better food, more often than not.

Neil: You know, even after years in the slope, I've never been there; my wife has many times but I have a thing about waiting- especially for food that's this easy to make. And yes, the infinite variations make it fun every time.

The pasta maker might be my best birthday gift ever.

We Are Never Full said...

ahhh, brooklynguy - al di la just caught my eye (in my hood!). Wait! I'm realizing you're both in Brooklyn. I love this! The thing I was going to comment on was the guanciale. I wrote about a piece I smuggled back from Italy last summer on my blog and I could shed a tear thinking about it. I would LOVE to try making my own some day. I need to get a place bigger than a shoebox. We have a basement, but not sure the landlords would go for pig jowls hanging from the rafters.

Great to find your blog.

Amy @ http://www.weareneverfull.com

peter said...

Hi, Amy. Welcome.
I'm often in Brooklyn, and I used to be there all the time.

Depending on your landlords' ethnicity, they might be open to a tithe of some sort- say, 10% of the porky goodness?

In any case, it's ridiculously easy to make, and you can hang it in front of your kitchen window if you have to (do it before it gets too hot!)