Sanctuary from The Mad World
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch. - Orson Welles

Wise chefs say the simpler the dishes, the more difficult they are. I can’t agree more when I was making this dish. Sure I’ve cooked pasta with mushroom countless of time but this season’s sample of Porcini, also called Bolet in French or Steinpilzen in German, made me rethink my technique.

On a recent trip to the Italian-speaking Switzerland, we discovered that Porcini, the wild mushroom abundant only at the end of summer and early autumn, was in rage.  We sampled a few but we love the one served in Carona in the compound of its Botanical Garden.  The porcini was brown and nutty. All the earthy flavours shine. Texturally, it was juicy and firm. I realize I’ve always done my mushroom incorrectly.

Mushrooms are friends of butter, onion and parsley. So I use them. The key is in the timing. You’ll be rewarded with sweet, flavourful, and toothsome mushroom sauce. Due to the rather oily nature of the dish, it’s best served with bone-dry, light white wine.

Ingredients:
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Servings:  four

This week, I had a craving for duck ragu. I dream of their succulence within rich tomato sauce. I bought a piece of duck breast from our favourite butcher.

Apparently, it’s quite a popular dish for celebrity chefs. Gooling brought me to Emeril Lagasse and Mario Batali. My own copy of Cook with Jamie contains one too.

This recipe is a simplification of Jamie Oliver’s recipe as I want to taste the gamey flavour of the duck in rich tomato sauce (from the duck fat) instead of witnessing the fight of flavours among orange, duck, and tomato sauce. For wine, I used the fruity yet powerful Chilean red from Maipo Valley (Cab. Sauvignon and Carménère). 

Now I know why this is such a popular dish. It’s not difficult to make but the result is impressive. The meat is tender and the sauce complex making it the perfect sleep-inducing meal on a hot Sunday afternoon.  After (his) washing the dishes, we snored away.

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Serving:  for two

For my Tagliatelle with White Asparagus of the season, I tried another version of pasta. I realize from reading numerous recipes that pasta is basically flour with some liquid added. That liquid can be eggs, oil, water, even chopped vegetables. For egg pasta, the ratio is roughly 100 g of flour for 1 egg.

Two cups of flour weighs approx. 236g so I need slightly more than two eggs. I hate using only yolk as the white will just languish in my fridge until it spoils. I remember olive oil. 

It was actually very good as the olive oil burst back into the mouth when bitten. The pasta, in turn, is not so eggy and has more bite to it.

I also realize that some kneading is necessary for good texture. So this time, I did not leave the whole work to my food processor. Drying also improves the ease of cooking.

As the whole thing was very quick (I did other things while waiting, like preparing ingredients), I seriously don’t think I’ll ever go back to factory-made flat pasta anymore. Besides, snobbish hubby balks at the notion.  Sorry, Barilla. It was fun.

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Servings: for four

Once in a while, I find good recipes by Rowley Leigh in the Financial Times. This recipe is actually very easy to make but all the shaving and grating make it a little tedious. The reward is great though. The pasta is softly perfumed by the delicate fragrance of the white asparagus which left me sniffing while draining the pasta and asparagus.

I know it doesn’t look much but it is delicious. The dish is a medley of spiciness from pepper and Parmesan with the softness of the pasta and crunch of asparagus. Do use Tagliatelle which I find to be the most tender of all pasta and thus matches well with the fine asparagus ribbons.

I served this dish as a light dinner with mixed green salad. This time round, accompanied only by plain tap water with a slice of lemon.

Original recipe is here.

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Servings:  two portions

I was reading Ruth Reichl’s Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Food Critic, which is an excellent book, and was drooling over her recipe of Spaghetti Carbonara. I made it a long time ago when I was in Jakarta using the recipe from Cordon Bleu’s Pasta. It calls for 8 eggs for 1 pound of pasta! No wonder it failed: I remember the smell of the uncooked eggs. Yuck!

Thanks to her enthusiastic and skillful writing, Reichl’s recipe prompted me to try again. This one is good. My husband, the pasta lover, couldn’t stop raving about it. It was such a comforting yet very easy dish for cold winter nights and it went well with dry white wine to cut the richness. This is already a staple in our house aside from pasta aglio olio.

Recipe is tweaked from the said book.

Ingredients:
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