Post a Comment On: Confessions of a Restaurant Whore

As the whore is finishing up the last of her shows, and I'm left alone one last Saturday night, I thought I'd hijack her blog and do a post of my own. Shhh, don't tell her.

Not having much to do, I figured I'd make myself a spectacular dinner, but wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to make. I stopped at Costco, but didn't find any nice meat-stuffs, so it was going to be a Vegetarian only meal. Good thing Rainbow's on the way home from Costco.

I figured it had been a while since I'd made ravioli, and while walking through the produce aisle I spotted nice looking spring onions and fava beans. You always need a salad with pasta, so I figured some bitter greens, with fennel and tangerines would do nicely. (I don't make this shit up, I just regurgitate crap we've had at various restaurants.) I needed something for dessert too, and the strawberries looked awesome (albeit $5/pint -- shit this place is expensive.)

I came home and cooked up a fucking storm. Music blaring , I went to town. Because this was going to be a social dinner-making exercise (yes I know it was just for me), I cleaned some radishes I bought at Rainbow, opened a nice half bottle of Robert Sinsky, started snacking and began the prep.

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I tend to use recipes less and less, but was curious if we had anything useful in our wide array of cookbooks. I was going to use Jamie Oliver's pasta recipe again, but I checked the Silver Spoon and went with their recipe instead. (It worked like a charm.) As the dough was resting in the fridge, I prepped the beans, and the spring onions. Those were mixed with some Bellweather farms ricotta, parmagiana and lemon juice. Rolling out the pasta dough worked wonderfully, and I put down the dollops of filling:


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After folding over the raviolis, and cutting them apart, I put them back in the fridge while I worked on the salad. I washed the watercress, and arugula, and shaved the fennel on the mandolin. I mixed up a dressing of olive oil, lemon and tangerine juice. Then I neatly pealed and sliced the tangerines, lying it all out on the plate and dressing it. Damn sexy:

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Pasta water was boiling, and a saute pan was ready for the pasta "sauce." I was going really simple, as the ravioli filling was very tasty itself. (I should know, as I'd eaten a quarter of it already.) I threw the ravioli into the water, and butter and sage into the saute pan. After about seven minutes the ravioli went into the saute, and a few minutes later -- viola, dinner was complete:

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And damn, it was a fine frickin' dinner. I ate all the raviolis, though I had intended on saving some for her. I saved some salad, finished up the wine, and then passed out for a while. Dessert will have to wait till tomorrow.

Thanks y'all for indulging the whore's husband. I promise, she'll be back to her fabulous writing soon. (I miss her much more than you guys do!)

-Jon