These bread sticks are brought to you by Sweet Paul Magazine. Well, more specifically they are *inspired* by a photo that I saw in his magazine, but the recipe that I used is actually my usual grissini recipe. I absolutely love the presentation, and they taste pretty damn good too.
Things to do with Ramps, Part 2: Make pasta. Yes, I’ve been on a bit of a pasta making kick these days anyway, but I figured that this wouold be a good experiment to see if the rampiness-flavor would shine though, even if you make pasta out of it. And I am happy to report that it does, almost to the point where it didn’t need any more dressing up, so I just rendered some panchetta and added some parm, and voila.
As always, my home made pasta directions are designed to use an old-fashioned hand-crank pasta machine. I don’t use my KitchenAid for this, but I am sure that you could. Just follow those directions staring with paragraph three.
Savenor’s Market and Butcher Shop is right down the street from me. And by “right down the street”, I mean about a 6 minute walk. This is a really really good thing as they not only have the biggest selection of specialty meats (it’s where I have gotten rabbit, and duck, and venison steaks), but their cuts of meat are a cut above, so to speak. Also, as I am a huge Julia Child fan, it’s always nice to think that it was “her butcher” here in Cambridge.
So I got myself this thick cut, bone in heritage chop. Including the brine time, it was on the table in under an hour and was simply the most flavorful pork chop that I have had in the US (note: I find the pork much more flavorful in Germany as a whole, but that is because they eat more pork as a culture and still have a greater selection of pork types; and they are bred differently). This is how I prepared it, along with some heirloom carrots and bacon wrapped asparagus.
Another Spring-like endeavor! And I think that Pea Pesto might be my favorite new type of pesto. It is light and refreshing and can be used cold as a spread as in this application, or used on pasta in a warm dish. This open-faced sandwich can be dressed up with the addition of cherry tomatoes too. Yum!
Random Story: Back in the day, when I lived in Seattle, Ben had a colleague from Iran (via Canada). When he found out that I was German, the very first thing that he said was “Oh, she must make great quiche!” This confused the heck out of me at the time because apparently Germans are great quiche bakers and I didn’t even know it. Turns out that I have no idea where he got this perception, but nevertheless to this day, I think of him whenever I make a quiche.