Asparagus and Ricotta Ravioli with Favas and Sage Brown Butter
Never mind that the recipe was probably one of the easiest I’ve ever followed. A year ago, if you asked me whether I ever thought about making my own ricotta cheese I would have laughed, crinkling my brow like a concerned mother in a movie, and said plainly: no, never.
As frequent readers of SpicySaltySweet can attest, I do like making dishes from scratch. In fact, I get quite the kick out of deconstructing things I used to take for granted. A few years back I made a soupy mess that was my excuse for Greek yoghurt. I’ve made my own butter. I make fresh pasta almost weekly now. But cheese? Cheese is something spiritual—a vehicle for transcendence that no mere home cook could possibly concoct in her kitchen.
But when I stumbled across Julia Moskin’s article about ricotta in the New York Times two weeks ago, I became convinced that making my own would not require divine intervention.
Last Thursday was the Vernal Equinox, the day in the Northern Hemisphere when the night and day are essentially the same length. It is also the official start of spring and my second favorite time of year after fall. But living in Southern California, it’s easy to get a little detached from the seasons—the daffodils, cherry blossoms and tulips started blossoming at the end of February and I’ve returned to wearing flip flops most days—but I find that cooking always keeps me in time with the earth’s clock. Feeling springy, I decided to host “Easter” dinner for a few friends, a slightly surprising turn of events since I’m Jewish. Yet no sooner was the guest list confirmed than I found out I was supposed to work Sunday brunch at the restaurant I’ve been moonlighting at. Rather than cancel I decided to pick a simple menu, prep Saturday and have Neal do a bunch of the cooking while I was at work.
Egg Papardelle with Bagna Cauda, Wilted Radicchio and an Olive Oil-Fried Egg
I’m a culinary masochist. It’s taken me awhile to come to terms with this, but a few recent cooking endeavors have made the truth difficult to avoid. The facts are, perhaps, best exemplified by my new favorite cookbook: Nancy Silverton’s A Twist of the Wrist. Nancy’s book is designed to help home cooks create gourmet meals using the bevy of high-quality pre-packaged ingredients lining the grocer’s shelves. Sounds great, right? Used correctly, these jars, boxes and tins are timesaving complements to Nancy’s delicious, well-thought-out recipes. But in my DIY-addled brain I see Nancy’s timesaving devices as the opportunity to try making other, more time-consuming components from scratch. At my house, a meal from Nancy’s book that’s supposed to take a half an hour suddenly takes three— Continue reading »
Wedding rehearsal dinners can be a drag. The food, most often, seems like an afterthought. But at a recent wedding in San Diego I was pleasantly surprised to find that the bride and groom had hired a taco truck to cater their post-rehearsal picnic at the Cove in La Jolla. They served delicious, authentic tacos on handmade fresh tortillas. I watched studiously as the cook ran little balls of dough through a hand-crank machine that flattened and punched out perfect five-inch circles. He threw the tortillas on a hot griddle and then ladled carne asada or chicken in them, then topped each with a little chopped cabbage and crema.
The tacos were amazing! And better still, you could smell the tortillas warming on the griddle from halfway down the beach. Sea air wrapped around aromas of sweet corn, enticing like fresh bread baking in an outdoor oven.
Since then, I’ve been on a bit of a taco kick, leading my boyfriend and I to the Best Fish Taco in Ensenada—a welcoming, turquoise-colored converted auto body shop in Los Feliz (on Hillhurst). Continue reading »
