phragmentation

Wednesday night, after Bella, Vera and I had our Kabuki baths, we ran into Dodger at Safeway and came up with a dinner plan: homemade pasta with fresh peas from our Sunday beach excursion off Hwy 92. Vera had three bottles of wine in her backpack already, and we also acquired some spinach, tomatoes, asiago cheese, and 6 lbs. of bacon — it was on sale, buy one 3lb package, get another one free. How does one resist such a deal?

When we got to Dodger’s, Timmii was there, increasing our dinner number to 5. Then Mike and Sara showed up. Ok, 7 for dinner.

For the pasta, I showed Vera and Bella my newly learned technique from cooking school in Lucca last month. For each batch, we mixed ~ 1/4 c whole wheat flour with ~1/4 c white flour. Stirred in an egg, a drizzle of olive oil, and then some water until it held together, adding a bit more white flour to get it stiff enough to knead, which we did for about 10 minutes. Then we wrapped our 3 batches and let them sit while we fried the bacon (only about a pound of it), chopped the tomatoes, steamed the peas, and sizzled some red onion and garlic in the bacon grease… We set a big pot of water to boil and rolled out our dough in my pasta machine that I had gotten 15 years ago in Moscow. A few little marks on the rollers but once we got it set right, it worked quite well. We cut it into fettuccine and boiled it with some salt and olive oil. Meanwhile, in a big bowl I threw in the baby spinach leaves with all the other stuff… then tossed in the cooked pasta and a generous amount of shredded cheese, leaving some for people to add themselves. Just as we were indulging in seconds, four more people showed up! They had already eaten but were happy to sample what was left. A grand success for my first attempt at pasta in San Francisco for people other than my relatives.

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