Oh My! Pasta printemps!

Three posts in three days! My word!

Anyways, I made some AWESOME pasta that I wanted to tell The Internet about. I get really fussy about eating once it hits, oh, 75 degrees outside. My kitchen, in addition to being dysunctionally organized, is also unbearably poorly ventilated so I rarely cook after May or so. I took advantage of a storm-cooled evening to make one last delicious hot meal before summer rolls in and I start to subsist on fruit, fruit smoothies, raw veggies, cheese, and yogurt. (SIDE NOTE: one would think that summer would be an excellent time for weight loss. It is not. I am mystified by this. I think the answer is that I move much, much less plus I don't have the massive calorie loss from keeping myself warm in a drafty house that I am too stubborn to turn the heat on in all winter)

SO. Here is the springtime pasta recipe. I was inspired by seeing a few different recipes mixing goat cheese and asparagus, plus I've been wanting to try the cooking regular pasta like risotto thing for a while. I am a little unsure on the timing of when to add the asparagus-I added it before I added the pasta, and that was a mistake. Next time I will probably add it about halfway through cooking the pasta, which is what I wrote here.

Spring pasta
You will need:
3 small/2 medium shallots or 1 small onion, finely chopped
3 cloves of garlic, smashed and minced
About 1/2 cup sun dried tomatoes (dried, not the ones packed in oil), sliced into thin strips
chopped rosemary (about 1 sprig)
1 bunch asparagus, trimmed and cut into 1-2 inch pieces
1/2 pound dried gemelli or farfalle or some other shaped pasta
Red pepper flakes (a pinch! a little goes a long way here)
1-2 cups light white wine (I used a cheap riesling that had been in my fridge for...a while. better wine=better taste, but crappy wine still=pretty awesome taste)
~6 oz. Goat Cheese

1. Heat 2-3 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil in a large skillet over med-high heat. Add shallots or onions and cook for a few minutes, until soft and translucent. Add garlic and cook 1-2 minutes until soft. Add tomatoes and rosemary, and turn the heat down to med. Cook 3-5 minutes until everything is soft and mushy
2. Meanwhile, heat wine and an equal measure of water* in a small saucepan over medium heat. It doesn't need to boil, just get warm. And if it doesn't get warm, it's not the end of the world
3. Once wine mixture is warm, add about 1 cup of it to the skillet, and add a pinch of red pepper flakes if desired** and then add pasta. Return to a simmer, stirring frequently
4. When liquid is almost entirely absorbed, add another 1 cup of warmed wine mixture and continue stirring. Add asparagus pieces.
5. Continue replenishing cooking liquid 1/2-1 cup at a time and stirring frequently until pasta is tender. Turn off heat and let sit for a few minutes to absorb residual liquid
6. Add goat cheese, toss to mix, and enjoy!

* If you are fancy, you will use chicken or vegetable stock in this style of cooking pasta. HOWEVER, I did not have stock on hand (NOT FANCY), and I actually think it would have added too much richness to the dish.
** be sparing with the pepper-it's going to infuse into the cooking liquid and thus into the pasta and veggies, which means it will pack much more punch.

Book Club gone awry

So my sister and I, in our book club, are currently reading The Aeneid. We generally like it, but were discussing tonight how we wish more time was spent on Dido and Aeneas doomed love and how someone should really write a novel further exploring the story. We started imagining how we would write it. Set in modern times, Dido (in this version we call her by her greek name Elissa) is now a plucky but dim governor of a frontier state, her evil brother is the leader of the local militia, Aeneas is a indecisive terrorist who inexplicably brings his band of comrades to said state, her stupid sister Anna is now her special needs sister Anna. The final scene is in a long empty hall filled with benches, where Elissa (having killed herself after Aeneas left for a promised haven in canada) refuses to accept Aeneas's (departing somewhat from virgil's version, in our masterpiece, aeneas returns to terrorism and blows up himself and the statehouse when he returns from canada only to find Elissa has died) post mortem apologies. She sits several benches in front of him and cries silently while he gives a quite moving speech, and then turns towards the shadow of her ex husband (killed by her evil brother in a hunting "accident") without ever looking back at Aeneas. A tear jerker.



Our final judgement:
Sister: maybe we should write a screenplay
and not the great american novel.
or, let's be real.
The Great America novel will be a Screenplay.
about Sarah Palin.



Needless to say, we did not have any serious discussions about the devil, god, or ancient literature during this week's meeting.

Two Songs I've been loving

Bon Iver. This is a "spontaneous" a capella version of "for emma", but I like the studio version too, as well as "Skinny Love"




La Roux. She's up-and-coming, and will inevitably be compared to Lady Gaga because she's a bit on the weird side. Nowhere close in terms of over-the-top performance, but it's a fun, catchy song.

On Angels

One of my favorites, by Czeslaw Milosz:

All was taken away from you: white dresses,
wings, even existence.
Yet I believe in you,
messengers.

There, where the world is turned inside out,
a heavy fabric embroidered with stars and beasts,
you stroll, inspecting the trustworthy seams.

Short is your stay here:
now and then at a matinal hour, if the sky is clear,
in a melody repeated by a bird,
or in the smell of apples at close of day
when the light makes the orchards magic.

They say somebody has invented you
but to me this does not sound convincing
for the humans invented themselves as well.

The voice — no doubt it is a valid proof,
as it can belong only to radiant creatures,
weightless and winged (after all, why not?),
girdled with the lightening.

I have heard that voice many a time when asleep
and, what is strange, I understood more or less
an order or an appeal in an unearthly tongue:

day draw near
another one
do what you can.

As I have mentioned, I am not terribly faithful, certainly not very religious. That said, I appreciate Milosz's ability to address questions of faith in an intellectual voice, to admit that it requires a suspension of thought to truly believe in the divine or at least the mysterious. I like his ability to tackle questions of faith and doubt, guilt and redemption, in such a smart and beautiful way