Saffron Pasta: May Your Stomach Smile and Your Heart Be Full

For two or three people, first you take half a teaspoon of saffron threads and soften them with one tablespoon of hot water in a bowl. Break one egg into the bowl and blend the saffron and egg together, then add one cup of flour and knead it with your hands until you have a firm dough. This shouldn't take more than five minutes total. Divide the dough in quarters and feed it through your pasta machine that you bought on Mulberry Street in the Shmapple 35 years ago.



Use the thicker blade to cut the pasta sheets into fetuccine.



Make a simple sauce out of a sauteed onion, half a dozen plum tomatoes and two tablespoons of capers. Throw the fetuccine into the pan and let them cook together for five minutes. Put the finished pasta and sauce into the cracked blue bowl Little Bear-nik bought for you in Oregon.



Next, head on out to the arugula patch in the Rear Forty. Pick you a few handfulls.



Toss the arugula with a simple shallot vinaigrette (1 shallot soaked for ten minutes in 1 T red wine vinegar and half a teaspoon salt, then combined with 3T olive oil), and add a small chunk of chopped up French Feta.



Cover half of two or three dinner plates with saffron pasta and caper sauce, and fill the plates up with arugula and feta salad. As the ancient Plotnikkies said: "May your stomach smile and your heart be full."



Next week, PD, 5H and BI as well as The Great BZWZ will all be in different countries. Food will help.