Fettuccine with Toasted Broccoli Breadcrumbs, Parmesan and Ricotta

My appetite is slowly returning and primarily for carbs. Whoa nelly on the pasta, bread and cake I crave.

Last night, after spending nearly four hours trying to get an answer from various health professionals about just what is ailing Oliver, I was exhausted, hungry and in possession of some gorgeous fresh fettuccine from Vace, a fabulous little Italian market nearby.

It seemed reasonable to consider that my body would revolt if I didn't feed it something green, so I decided on broccoli as I'd purchased some fresh heads earlier in the week. 

Y'all know when you roast broccoli and the tree-top ends get blackened? The flavor concentrates? And you just wish every bit of the broccoli tasted like those little frondy ends? I adore those bits and pieces so decided to basically shave the head off the broccoli stalk and make "breadcrumbs."

I tossed the broccoli shavings with some regular breadcrumbs (made from stale baguette; the best), garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper, and then roasted the whole mess on a sheet pan in a low oven, maybe 250 Fahrenheit, until everything was toasty and just-crisp, about 25 minutes.

When all that was nearly done, I boiled the egg fettuccine (isn't egg pasta insanely lush and wonderful?) until just done, reserved some of its cooking water, drained it and then returned it to hot pan. I added back some cooking water as well as a few spoons of fresh ricotta and a generous shower or three of freshly grated Parm.

When that was fairly well incorporated, I drizzled some top-quality olive oil on top and gently folded in most of the breadcrumbs. Then more Parm and finally the rest of the breadcrumbs. Voila! I ate enough to feed a small army. Delish!

Bacon fat and hipsters

With an iced tea spoon, I take some strained bacon drippings from the jar we keep in the fridge. T has this cute habit of frying bacon and draining the rendered fat through a paper towel into this clear glass jar which ages ago held jelly. The various layers of cold fat remind me of the stratification of earthly sediment, each ring delineating old and new and dating the time of deposit. When I scoop the cold lard from the jar, it balls like a delicate ice cream. I toss it into my cast iron skillet and watch as it starts to soften instantaneously. Fat can seem so revolting and stubborn but also so graceful and useful.

I think about how I once would have died before saving bacon drippings, much less using them with gusto. I consider that my scoop of fat skating slowly across the bottom of the iron pan (our stove top is slightly off-balance and so I'm often fighting a decline) makes me feel awfully hipsterish. I mean, if I grew a handlebar mustache and started roasting coffee beans in the pantry, we might as well move to Brooklyn. I say that with tremendous affection.

But what really drives me, and the sincerest hipsters who, by the way, are owed a debt of gratitude for making excellent coffee easier to come by, is the simple realness of my task. With my trusty, multipurpose pan and the reuse of a foodstuff that already gave generously once before, I will make something wonderful for dinner.

T is coming home to eat with me tonight, a treat that's all too rare these days. I want to feed us well for doing so is not only pleasurable but also an elemental way of showing love for another. We have both been working so hard, and to sit together and appreciate a beautiful meal, to share that offering and to connect over it feels important and right.

I like feeling linked to things: to processes, animals, people, communities and self. It's important to me to know that the pig whose bacon feeds my family at breakfast and whose fat continues to flavor and nourish our food was happy and free to roam and treated well while alive. I need to know that she was treated humanely, in life and in death, because only then can I cook and eat her in good faith.

When I cook, I consider these life cycles. The way I take from one to give to another and how I teach my family to do the same with the utmost respect. Recently, Oliver said, "This chicken is from a real chicken, right?" And I said, "Yes, honey, it is. So let's give thanks and be sure we make sure that chickens like it live well."

The same should be true with our non-animal, non-familial relationships. The internet complicates the ways in which we interact with people. On the one hand, it enables us to meet people with whom we have much in common except for geography. On the other, it's easier to be mean from afar, hiding behind firewalls and avatars, and so we learn to treat new and promising connections with some skepticism. I remain hopeful though and despite the few bad apples, I feel lucky for all the terrific people I've met and become friends with online. Connection is such a rudimental need, and online capabilities have broadened so many of our worlds.

As the bacon fat heats and becomes transparent, I ready some mustard greens and asparagus, envisioning a saute of both topped with shaved Parmesan, lemon and basil-infused oil. It results in a perfect dish, and we finish the bowl as if it were dessert.

www.em-i-lis.com

www.em-i-lis.com

Great Green salad

Without the slightest bit of lady façade tinting this statement with falsity, I want to aver that I love a good salad. I really, truly do. I like messy "kitchen sink" salads, what I like to call compost salads. Those are the sorts crafted by tossing in a deep bowl (spills are annoying), all manner of vegetal flotsam found in your crisper drawers with any grains, nuts, fruits, meats, cheeses and dressing you fancy and then flipping the result onto a plate or into a generously-sized bowl (see above parenthetical note for the why). Serve with warm bread if you like, perhaps some hummus or dipping oil too. Enjoy.

I also appreciate a composed salad though I don't often make them just for me because really, who has the time? As well, I want to enjoy my food and, especially at lunchtime for the love, if making it requires too much in the way of preciousness or crafting, the pleasure-factor is diminished. Not always, but you get my drift.

I like pasta salads and grain-based salads, fruit salads and warm salads. I like leftover salad too, unless you start with the wrong sort of lettuce in which case the leftovers aren't nicely marinated but instead remind me too much of the stems of flowers that have been in a vase for a week: slimy, smelly, yuk.

And I enjoy experimenting with the ways various ingredients can come together in salad form.

Today, I craved a fresh, unique salad. I'm -gasp- the slightest bit tired of tomatoes and regular old lettuce. So I poked around and found half a head of the always-beauitful Savoy cabbage; two heads of sweet Belgian endive which I adore for its crunchy, vaguely bitter, delicate flavor; some Persian cucumbers; and some scuppernong grapes*. I immediately chose all of that plus some Parmesan, a Meyer lemon, walnut oil and fresh walnuts which I immediately toasted so that they could cool while I made the salad.

I adore cabbage but I wanted it to be part of the team here. As such, I sliced it into paper-thin slivers to match rather than overwhelm the texture and taste of the endive. I didn't peel the cucs because A) peel = fiber and other good stuff, and B) I like texture and color and cuc peel adds both. I quartered the grapes both because they are large and I wanted to do the seeding work in advance of indulging in this lovely salad-to-be.

The dressing was made by the simple whisking together of two tablespoons of walnut oil, the juice of half that Meyer lemon, salt and freshly ground pepper. Using a vegetable peeler, I shaved Parmesan feathers over the top, dressed the salad and let it sit for a few minutes so the flavors could diffuse and marry. This hit the spot completely!

*Scuppernongs are a large variety of the muscadine, a grape that has a thicker-than-usual skin, three to four seeds, hails from the southern US and is worth every bit of the effort required to -oh my!- eat a grape with seeds. Scuppernongs (and muscadines) aren't available all year but are in season now. Try some! You won't be sorry!

To read more about scuppernongs (because really, isn't it fun to say their name?), read this Garden & Gun article, if only for the stunning photo.