Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Feed the Bird


I try to make dinner every night. I have a lot of recipe ideas and dinner is an excuse to test them out. Most of the time I'm working with pretty simple stuff. On nights like tonight I'm not recreating some elaborate gourmet meal or trying a complicated or foreign technique for the first time. I just want to put something together that is nourishing and tasty.

There is this great little place called Sandy's just down the road and they carry lots of fruits and veggies from local growers along with the usual specialty items that are sometimes hard to find at the grocery here. Yesterday they had fiddleheads, morels, and ramps in addition to their usual selection. I was tempted, but we're on a budget so I settled for an eggplant, some green onions, a meyer lemon and pearl pasta. I wasn't quite sure then how they would all come together...

This morning my mom returned from the grocery with fresh chorizo. Slowly a plan began to emerge. What about a pearl pasta salad with chorizo and griddled eggplant? I'm a big fan of all things green so I decided that the pasta salad should be served over a green salad. I already had mint and arugula in the fridge. If I tossed that in a meyer lemon vinaigrette it might just be delicious.

So, here it is.

Wild arugula and mint with a squeeze of meyer lemon juice and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil beneath pearl pasta tossed with green onion, shaved fennel, chick peas, sauteed chorizo and eggplant. I also added a bit of fresh parsley and meyer lemon zest to the pasta to brighten the flavor.

A simple and satisfying bite for a hungry bird.


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