Ingredients per person:

Ingredients per person:

60 grams of egg pasta 'alla chitarra' (square) or 90 grams of dry spaghetti

4 cherry tomatoes

1-2 tbs of cream

1 pat of unsalted butter

2-3 basil leaves (sweet and small)

salt and pepper

1 tbs of salmon eggs

4 cleaned asparagus

4 dice-sized cubes of broccoli stem

4 small pieces of broccoli flower and

....that's about it.

..so. It's been a pretty good culinary season. You've made risottos and farro-ttos, the usual spaghetti dishes, passatelli, polenta, hamburgers, piadini with chicken or pork, fish dishes, quail, steak, lamb, soups, cookies, cakes, pudding, stir fry... even agedashi fried tofu. Winter stuff (which this year an arctic front extended into early March) made to warm the kitchen and house, both the temperature and the scents of something... engulfing against the cold. Embracing, even consoling plates.

Now winter is passing, finally, but spring hasn't yet flexed its green, fresh muscles, not fully anyway and you're not sure what to make, what mix of emotions you want dinner to spoon in. Too warm and... growing for pasta with beans, not sunny-blue enough for luke-warm dishes or a spring-summer grill. There's a bit of dissonance in the air. Pizza's usually not bad this time of year, I yield, as aren't lightened forms of the above mentioned things. But you'd like a newer thing, an odd mix of flavors that reminds of.... plants just beginning to spread their leaves up from the cool soil, flowers yet unbudding on branches filled with promise.

 

So... this is a kind of dish that mixes December with May, an oddness that somehow fits the cool light gray of early March's waning winter nights. Goodbye to cold darkness but not quite yet hello to bright springtime desires, the kind of plate a modern Persephone might be served on her flight up from Hades...

And it's easy one-pot and fast once the cleaning is done. Put the tall pot of salted water on to boil and once boiling, add the asparagus stems (11 min. boiling time), then after a few minutes the broccoli stem and asparagus tips (8 min.) then the pasta (adjust the timing to whatever pasta you're using) and finally the broccoli flowers (4-5 minutes). Meanwhile in a big mixing bowl add the butter, cream, quartered cherry tomatoes, salt - not much if any - to taste, a quick turn of freshly ground black pepper, the shredded basil and the salmon eggs. Once the pasta is ready, drain but leave the noodles wet and quickly transfer them along with the vegetables into the bowl and mix well but delicately. (You could substitute pomegranate for the salmon but... let's let winter go... and prepare to build new, once this virus has gone its way...)

 

 

 

Serve with a medium bodied white. It's a bit strange but satisfying as you feel the darkness of the passing season falling away, almost out of memory...