Do you have those places that you always walk by and tell yourself when you have more time, you will definitely go into them? Whether it's food purveyors, clothing shops, jewelry boutiques or wine stores, you name it, I am sure that you too have your list of "to-go" places. Sometimes it might take you months to get to them or sometimes you are able to make it on your day off, or on a lunch break...
On my list of such places was an Italian store called Raffetto's on West Houston between Sullivan and MacDougal. Old-world New York City at its best, this shop makes all of its pasta in house and fresh none the less, it almost feels as though you have stepped into a time warp when entering through their front door. After perusing through their many homemade dry pastas and their refrigerated raviolis, I ended up at the store's back counter where they have about a dozen different sorts of homemade pasta dough (from chestnut to buckwheat flour pastas, you name it, they probably have it) that they will cut to any sort of shape for you. Being a huge tomato fan and not normally seeing tomato pastas, I decided to go with tomato pappardelle for my first foray into Raffetto's amazing pasta selection. I knew I would be back to try every other flavor of fresh and eventually dried pastas as well but for my first visit, I was going to exercise restraint and only buy one. I know aren't you impressed?!? I certainly was proud of myself.
Upon my purchase of this delicate pasta, I quickly changed my ideas for what I was going to make for dinner last night on a rainy Friday eve to feature my newly acquired pasta, I couldn't wait to try it! Here is what I decided on to top my pasta star:
I decided to make a mushroom, herbs, garlic, wine, and campari and sundried tomato sauce to be tossed with parmesan and a little bit of pepato cheese to add that nice peppery punch to the tomato pappardelle. I chopped up both types of tomatoes, the mushrooms, garlic and tossed them in a pan with the olive oil, herbs, and some cooking wine and let this cook over a low heat till everything had melded together. That was perfect timing because my pappardelle had just finished cooking so I tossed the veggies with the pasta and then topped it with some of the grated parmesan and freshly grated Pepato cheese over the top for that extra oomph.
Then I made a nice salad to complement the tomato centric main dish. It consisted of: arugula, chopped carrot, balsamic vinaigrette, and ricotta salata (Unlike it's name, this is not a ricotta sort of cheese, in Italian, ricotta means re-cooked, implying the cooking process to make this cheese. The milk curds and whey used to make this cheese are pressed and dried before the cheese's aging process, giving this pure white Italian sheep's milk cheese a dense, somewhat spongy texture and a nice salty almost milky flavoring. Perfect in salads, it holds up against salad dressings and adds a nice little milky, salty, cheesy dimension to the greens) When eating them, I combined the salad with the tomato pappardelle which created the perfect ratio of greens, veggies, cheese, and carbs to fuel up for my run this morning, a week before my marathon!
Enjoy the rainy Saturday guys!
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