Pappardelle con funghi e piselli B-day luncheon MH

Pappardelle con funghi e piselli

Wide, fat noodles with mushrooms and peas in cream sauce

This is the dish I'm going to make this coming Saturday for a luncheon of 6 women friends.

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons of sweet butter

1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil

1 small to medium sweet onion, sliced long

1 minced or squished garlic clove

1/4 cup (at least) of cut up bacon

1 lb of thin sliced Baby Bella mushrooms

3/4 lb of petite peas...if fresh, hallelujah! (if not, use fresh frozen)

1/2 cup of white wine (I'll use Pinot Grigio)

1 to 1 & 1/2 cups fresh heavy cream

3/4 cup of fresh grated parmigiano cheese

3 tablespoons minced fresh parsley

season with salt and fresh coarse ground black pepper to taste

1 lb of papparedlle (This pasta is fairly expensive over $5 for 1/2 lb...you'd better love your guests as I do.)

Optional: 2 tablespoons of tomato sauce

May add other mushrooms if desired

In a large heave fry pan, sauté the garlic, onions and bacon. Remove from the pan, add the mushrooms and fry up in remaining butter/oil. bacon drippings. Add wine and let the alcohol burn off. Add cream and let cook to thicken. Add, the removed mix plus the peas. Also you want to may add one to two tablespoons of tomato sauce for color, if desired.

Add cooked pasta to sauce and stir, adding cheese

Top with fresh minced parsley and serve.

For a second dish, I'm making rolled, stuffed fillet of sole, poached in wine and tomatoes. With this, I will serve a salad of rughetta (arrugala) and Gorgonzola.

Desert: Tiramisu--recipe is in the archives.

Italo Calvino

Italo Calvino has written many novels that blend fantasy and reality. Among these are, The Baron in the Trees (1957), Invisible Cities (1972) and If on a winter's night a traveler (1979).

He wrote realism with little success, and then decided to write the novel that he'd like to read. He said, "What stirs literature is the call and attraction of what is not in the dictionary."

And, "A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say."

And, "I feel suspicious about writers who claim to tell the whole truth about themselves, about life, or about the world. I prefer to stay with the truths I find in writers who present themselves as the most bold-faced liars."

He's an inspiration, folks! Basically what he's saying is write the poems you want, the stories, and the novels, but what he's not mentioning is the fact that what you're trying to write you may also want to publish someday...and herein lies the difficulty: do you listen to what brilliant men have to say about writing, or go with your gut?

Ropa Vieja (Old Clothes) A Spanish recipe

I might have posted this before--ages ago--but it's been so long since I blogged anything, I figured I'd toss it out here for the world at large just in case I skipped putting it on.

For tonight's dinner I made ropa vieja, which will sit and rest in fridge and then I'll skim off the fat--easy as it gels and floats to the top. Basically this translates to "old clothes- or rags" you make a soup of the meat first. Use skirt steak or flank.

If you have a bone, plop it into the water too--espeically if it's a cut with marrow. Add salt, black pepper, pieces of red or green pepper. a small onion and several pieces of garlic. And then you cook the shredded meat in a fairly spicy sauce with minced onions, garlic and peppers and hot pepper and a hit of vinegar and a hit of vino, and some of the soupy water. Cook this for about 45 minutes or so, or until the water cooks out and you have a nice dense saucy meat to serve over white rice.

Save the rest of the broth to make vegetable soup a few days later--two meals from the same meat.