Pasta Night: Lemon & Garlic

Jessie in Lexington, Va., had a classic cook's conundrum: an exotic ingredient she wanted to play with, but no clue how to use it. (How she came to have an excess of salty preserved lemon around to begin with is a mystery.) She writes:

"I'm never quite sure what to do with salty preserved lemon, so last night I tried adding it to a simple pasta dish. Throw a bunch of trimmed ramps (that have been blanched in boiling, salted water for about 3 minutes), lots of roasted garlic, olive oil, preserved lemon, and a squirt of fresh lemon juice to a food processor and pulse into smooth. Toss with al dente spaghetti, and top with grated parmesan and freshly ground pepper. Serve with a slice of homemade bread and home brew."

We're submitting this dish to Ruth's Presto Pasta Night. Crossing fingers...



The home brew is delightful, but hardly simple. If you have a few hundred free hours on your hands, give it a shot. Here again is Jessie:

"Making homemade beer is sort of like canning vegetables in that it requires standing over a 3 to 5 gallon pot of boiling liquid for a couple of hours while all the windows in your home fog up. But unlike canning, it's crucial to regularly measure the density of the liquid with a hydrometer before adding additional ingredients (tales abound of home brew bottles exploding under pressure due to imprecise hydrometer readings). What you're looking at here is a blond ale, with a 7 percent alcohol content, comprised mostly of malted barley and stored in 3-4 cases old Grolsch bottles. The entire process--boiling, bottling, and, in particular, fermenting--takes about 10-12 days. The taste reminds this beer maker of the English ale New Castle. "

A hydrometer???

Spring Omelet

Fresh ramps from the farmer's market. Garlicky-scalliony-earthy-buttery spring ramps. Delicious raw with a cold beer, chopped up on a salad, or cooked with just about anything. Here, we slice up the white bulbs and the thin pink stems and saute them in lots of butter in a non-stick pan. Then we add the beaten eggs.



We cook on a low heat, using a rubber spatula to keep the sides loose as the eggs slowly cook. When the omelet is nearly done, we sprinkle on some grated parmesan and gently fold.



We top with slices of ramp leaves, sea salt and pepper.