lemon pasta recipe
my v-day was nice and low key - we ate a lot, lay around afterwards bemoaning how much cream we had just ingested, then swilkesse and __myalgebra__ came over and we watched lost (a GOOD episode, too! hey, small things make me happy, and any episode in which desmond walks around shirtless 80% of the time is okay by me).
here's the rest of our meal, besides the arugula salad with goat cheese and pine nuts and the lemon pasta itself:
baguette with more goat cheese (we like cheese, okay?) and yes, lemonade. neither of us are into wine - i actually almost never drink because it just makes me fall asleep unless i ingest a LOT all at once and get really drunk. and then i do stupid stuff like post to livejournal. so, alcohol and me are not friends. though i do love stout.
we bought this at a bakery a block from our apartment. i actually didn't think it was very good. it's a brownie covered with fudge frosting stuff. at that point we were way too full to eat it anyway.
hankshiny thinks we should shop at trader joe's from now on because the safeway by our house sucks so hard, and whole foods is really expensive and also extremely unpleasant to shop in. i don't know. on the one hand, our safeway runs out of things like GOYA BLACK BEANS (COME ON) and PEANUT BUTTER. on the other hand, trader joe's . . . gah. i just hate rich people. whole foods is bad but you can hate it wholeheartedly because it's expensive. with trader joe's, it seems they suck you in by being cheap. and then before you know it you own a blackberry and your only encounters with black people are at the checkout counter.
anyway, enough stupid middle-class wah wah shit: recipe.
LEMON PASTA
Ingredients:
1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter
1 cup heavy cream (YES!)
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 pound fresh egg fettuccine
2 teaspoons finely grated fresh lemon zest
salt
freshly ground black pepper
freshly grated parmesan cheese
Instructions:
Melt the butter in a deep, heavy 12-inch skillet and stir in the cream and lemon juice. Remove skillet from heat and keep it warm and covered.
Cook pasta in large pot of salted boiling water until al dente, 2 or 3 minutes. Reserve 1/2 cup of the pasta cooking liquid and drain pasta into colander. Add pasta to skillet with the lemon zest and 2 tablespoons of the pasta cooking liquid and toss well. Add more cooking liquid 1 tablespoon at a time if you need to thin the sauce.
Season with salt and pepper and serve with parmesan cheese.
it's really really easy. hankshiny, if you have anything to add, comment. recipe taken pretty much word for word from ruth reichl. takes about half an hour.
one thing: DO NOT USE DRY PASTA WITH THIS RECIPE. the fresher the pasta, the better the dish. i have a feeling the cream sauce would just be gross and heavy on dry pasta. and i highly recommend having a green vegetable of some sort as well, as it lessens the guilt.
oh yeah, and DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES USE ANGEL HAIR PASTA. because you will end up with a big lump of starch, something like a giant gnocchi, covered in cream. ugh.