Spring pasta and a Rant

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What is this 'Spring Pasta?', you ask. It's not Spring anywhere in the world at the moment.

Well, I'm just a bit backlogged with the blog, so this recipe's a bit belated.

Okay, enough with the alliteration. I found this simple dish at 101 cookbooks and adjusted it to match the availability of produce at my local supermarket, ie. I had to leave out a lot of ingredients.  Nonetheless, it turned out reasonably well. If I make this again, I would cool the pasta a little before adding the eggy sauce, as it cooked a bit when added to the warm pasta.

Oh, and for a bit of a rant about my local store, go to the end of this post.

Spring-ish Pasta

serves 2

Ingredients

8 ounces / 225 g cooked, long pasta (like spaghetti, fettucine)

2 eggs

fine grain sea salt

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

2 cups of sliced, blanched asparagus, and/or pea shoots, or sliced broccoli trees, or other shredded greens

1 avocado, chopped

Method

1. Separate the pasta, so it's not clumpy or stuck together. Set aside.

2. In a small bowl, crack the eggs and beat well with a pinch of salt and set aside.

3. In a big frypan or skillet, melt the oil and butter over medium high heat. Add any vegetables that take longer to cook (asparagus, broccoli) to the pan . Add a couple pinches of salt, stir, cover, and cook until the vegetables are bright, and just cooked.

4. Stir in anything that just needs just quick cooking (snow pea shoots and soft greens).  Stir, and cook just until tender - a minute or so. Pull about 1/3 of the vegetables out of the pan and set them aside.

4. Add the pasta to the pan and toss well. Once the pasta is hot, turn down the heat, wait a moment, then quickly stir in the eggs. Stir well, then cover the pan, remove from heat, and let sit for a minute. Uncover, give everything another toss, the egg should be cooked through. Taste, and adjust the seasoning before dividing between two plates. Top with the reserved vegetables, and some chopped avocado.

recipe adapted from 101cookbooks.com

Ingredients: angel hair pasta, asparagus, broccolini, avocado

Chopping the blanched asparagus; eggs with a dash of truffle salt; just before tossing it all together. I also added a couple of anchovy fillets after heating the oil.

Some avocado and lots of pepper top the tangle of pasta and veg.

This is a nice, light dish that can be made with any combination of greens you have available, subject to your crapppy local supermarket.

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--- A Rant ---

I did try and find some snow pea shoots as specified in the original recipe, but the supermarket did not have any. Nor did they have any red capsicum or loose mushrooms, either. In fact, they were mushroom-less and capsicum-less for about a week. No one knows why.

So I picked up a bunch of broccolini and some thin asparagus (and was grateful to get it!) to go with the pasta. Imagine my shock when removing the label on the asparagus to see that it was 'Product of Peru'. Peru! Now, no offence to our South American friends, I'm sure your asparagus is the pride of your nation, but does Woolworths really have to ship it half way around the world in order to sell it in Sydney? It wasn't that expensive (less cost than a bottle of milk), and it tasted like most asparagus, but I hate the idea of the unnecessary trip that it took. And how fresh it might be by the time it got here.

That is all. Thanks for bearing with me. Though after the e. coli outbreaks in Europe recently, it does show how easily germs and microbes might travel, even if they do it in the hold of a plane or ship. Moral of the story: Wash your veges.