I bet you are wondering why I called this recipe “Kiss, Kiss, Bang Bang,” right?

Well, it has nothing to do with either James Bond, the movie with Robert Downey Jr. or the Torchwood episode of the same name.

It has to do with the nature of the recipe I am presenting.

This pasta sauce is such an explosion of strong flavors, that if you were to kiss someone after eating it, you would make a big bang of an impression upon them.

And probably not in a good way.

So, this title is a warning of sorts. If you are in a kissing mood after you eat this spaghetti, I suggest that you choose your target kissee wisely. The best strategy would be to feed your intended recipient of the kiss some of the pasta first, so that the two of you are equally armed when it comes to the strong flavors and aromas left in the mouth. The combination of caramelized onions, ramps, green garlic and goat feta is powerful–delicious, sensual and delightful, really, but you don’t really want to share it second hand. (Well, unless you know someone like me who thinks the aroma and flavor of garlic is just about the sexiest ever….) And the combination is strong enough, thanks to the ramps, that it will defeat the liberal application of Listerine, Altoids and Crest. (On the other hand, personally, I’d sooner kiss someone who has just eaten a raw garlic clove than someone who has washed his or her mouth out with Listerine. Listerine tastes like someone has been licking a hospital floor. Ick.)

So, the title is a warning, but it is also an advertisement for those who love big bangin’ flavors–if you love the sweetness of caramelized onions, the tang of garlic, the heady aroma of ramps, and the sword-sharp bite of goat feta, then this recipe is for you. Take all of those flavors, add the sweetness of tomatoes and the heat of a little bit of chilies, and you have a great, quick sauce for spaghetti that will not only chase the blues and blahs away, but will chase away anyone else you might want to be rid of as well.

The truth is–you can leave out the ramps if you must–especially if you have no way of getting them. Just add more green garlic or add some regular garlic to the sauce. Or just plain old leave it out. You can also forgo the butter in the recipe and just use olive oil instead, but I find that a bit of butter in addition to the olive oil softens the flavor of all of the alliums, and adds a certain richness to the sauce, making it cling deliciously to the spaghetti. You can also leave out the optional teaspoon of anchovy paste in order to make this dish vegetarian–the anchovy paste adds a great deal of umami flavor, but it isn’t necessary. I just think it perfectly rounds out the sauce and ties the different allium tastes together into a cohesive whole.

As for the goat feta, I was lucky enough to get some of the first batch of Chris Schmiel’s (of Integration Acres) home made feta from his goats. You may not be so lucky, so if you can’t get goat feta, use whatever feta you can get–the creamiest, tangiest, most sharp feta you can find.

One more thing–I used home-canned tomatoes and marinara sauce from last summer’s abundant tomato crop, but you can just as easily use store-bought canned tomatoes and jarred marinara. In fact, this would be a quick way to jazz up jarred sauce–just use the highest quality sauce you can buy, one without high fructose corn syrup, so that you get the truest, strongest tomato flavor possible.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang Spaghetti

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon butter (optional–you could use another tablespoon of olive oil instead)
2 cups thinly sliced yellow onions
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup fresh green garlic, white and light green parts only, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon Aleppo pepper flakes
1 teaspoon anchovy paste (optional)
1 teaspoon or to taste chili garlic paste–I used my homemade paste (or use freshly chopped chilies or a few drops of hot sauce)
1/4 cup dry sherry or dry red wine
1 pint canned tomatoes
1 quart marinara sauce
1 cup thinly sliced green garlic–dark green tops only
1 cup thinly sliced ramp leaves
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 pound thin spaghetti, cooked al dente
1/4 cup crumbled feta cheese

Method:

Heat olive oil and butter in a heavy-bottomed skillet until the butter foams. Add the onions and sprinkle with the salt. Cook, stirring, until the onions turn a deep golden brown. Add the garlic and continue stirring and cooking until the garlic turns golden and the onions are a deep reddish brown. add the pepper flakes, anchovy paste, and chili garlic paste, and cook, stirring for another minute. Add the sherry or red wine, and cook, stirring, until the alcohol boils off.

Add the tomatoes, and cook, stirring, until the juice is boiled off and the tomatoes begin to break down. Chop at the tomatoes with a spoon until they break down, and add the marinara sauce and keep cooking until the sauce thickens slightly. Toss in the green garlic tops and ramp leaves, and season to taste with salt and pepper. Cook until the leaves wilt slightly, then add drained spaghetti to the pot and toss until the pasta is well coated.

Swirl pasta onto serving bowls and top with crumbled feta cheese and serve immediately. (Serves six as a main course with salad.)

Today was a gorgeous spring day: the sun was bright, the sky was a perfect robin’s-egg blue, and flowers bloomed, filling the birdsong-laden air with fragrance.

Zak’s favorite tree is blooming, the tree that always says “springtime” to him–the redbud.

A native to the eastern US, particularly the Appalachian mountain regions, the redbud is a very small leguminous tree which in the spring is covered with tiny magenta-violet blossoms that look like miniature sweet pea flowers. Of course, there is a reason for that–remember I said that the tree was leguminous, meaning it is related to garden peas, sweet peas, peanuts, locust trees, beans of all sorts and lentils.

These tiny, lovely blossoms are edible, a fact little known outside of Appalachia. They are most often eaten raw in salads or used as a garnish, although they are also sometimes added to sauces or soups so they barely cook, retaining their fresh rosy coloration. Their flavor is rather bean-like, lightly sweet and somewhat starchy, with a tiny tang in the finish.

Long ago, the greenwood twigs and bark were also used to season game meats, leading to the common name, “spicewood tree” by which it is still known in isolated areas of Appalachia.

I like eating the flowers–I like the fresh sweet bean flavor, and in the past, I have mostly used it in salads and salad dressings, although I have also cooked with it, most notably in stir-fried dishes. But, as much as I enjoyed adding redbud flowers to chicken with bitter melon, the application wasn’t really as seasonal and local as it could have been.

I mean, there are plenty of classic Appalachian springtime foods one can gather from the wild with redbud flowers. Ramps are a perfect example, as are morels and tiny baby sheep sorrel.

I lucked into a pint of morels at the farmer’s market on Saturday which had been gathered by Chris Schmiel, founder of the Athens County PawPaw Festival, cultivator and gatherer of pawpaws, black walnuts, spicebush berries, ramps, wild mushrooms and all the other fine bounty of our Appalachian woodlands. He also makes the most delicious fresh chevre I have ever eaten in my life. Moist and soft with no chalky mouthfeel and delicately flavored with just a hint of sharpness, it is amazing. I buy some every week starting in the spring and continuing into fall, as long as his goats continue giving milk.

This afternoon while we drove off to Lancaster to pick up some sewing machine needles, as I watched the scenery pass and saw all of the redbuds in joyous bloom, I had the inspiration of combining morels, redbuds and chevre into a pasta sauce. If I’d have had ramps, those would have gone into the sauce as well, but I was out of them. Instead, I used some green elephant garlic, which I bought from Rich Tomsu at the market on Saturday.

(When I told Zak about the idea, he grinned and said that what he liked best about local foods was the seasonality of them. That you only have redbuds, ramps, and asparagus for short periods of time, so you eat a lot of them, and feast, and it is like a holiday that you look forward to all year around. Because, as he said, yeah, eating local is politically satisfying and good for the environment, but what turned him into a convert was that it all tasted so good. )

Green elephant garlic looks an awful lot like leeks, (there is an excellent reason for that–elephant garlic is more closely related to leeks than to garlic) but I discovered while I was cooking it that it smells and tastes like a milder form of ramps. The green and white stalks worked perfectly in the sauce, which I decided to call “Enchanted Forest Pasta” because the conical shape and wrinkled visage of morels reminds me of what little gnomes wearing pointy hats might look like, and because I always think that eating flowers is somewhat fey and not entirely proper. There is just something fairytale-like about eating foods gathered from the woodlands, and I cannot help but think that I eating what elves and spriggans might eat if the did indeed exist.

Like most simple pasta sauces, this dish went together easily and quickly. The morels required the most effort, being as they tend to hide grit and dirt in their hollow centers or among the wrinkled whorls and crevices of their surfaces. I rinse them briefly in water, cut them in half, trimming the bottom of the stem if it is tough, and then I shake each halved cap in a small bowl, knocking loose any remaining dirt and sand. Then, I take the caps out of the bowl and set them aside to dry until it is time to cook them.

The only non-local ingredient that I used in this sauce (the pasta wasn’t local, either, nor was the Aleppo pepper, now that I think on it) was the handful of pine nuts I added to it. I just thought that they would taste good with it, and I wanted something with a bit of crunch other than the fresh buttered breadcrumbs I made out of the heel of a loaf of honey oat bread from The Village Bakery, which is just down at the bottom of the hill our house sits on. While the pine nuts were good, honestly, I think that the breadcrumbs would have been fine on their own.

So, here is the recipe–note that it has fewer ingredients than most of my recipes, and that makes it great for a weeknight for normal folks, for a weekend after a long night shift for a restaurant worker. It is a beautifully balanced dish–the meaty, earthy morels flavor the cream and thus the sauce, but are held in check from overpowering everything by the sweet sharpness of the green garlic, and the tang of the goat cheese. The breadcrumbs and pine nuts add crunchy brown notes and the redbud blossoms add as sweet, leguminous crunch and aroma. It is the essence of springtime in the Appalachian hills and valleys I have always called home.

This would be great with a baby spinach salad topped with roasted baby beet slices and dressed with a simple balsamic vinegar and olive oil dressing.

Enchanted Forest Pasta
Ingredients:

Serves four for a main course.

Why is that, you may ask?

Huh, why, why, why?

Well, I will tell you why.

Because Restaurant Salaam, where I have been working for the past few months, was just named “Best Ethnic Restaurant” in the Dining section of the Athens News Best of Athens reader poll. We also took second place in “Best Vegetarian Cuisine,” third place in “Best Uniquely Athens Restaurant,” Honorable Mention in “Best Family Restaurant.”

Considering that we have only been open for a couple of years now and we are off the beaten track (our front doorway is down an alley–and then you step down from there into a really cozy, beautifully decorated underground space which has been turned into an intimate dining room), this is all great news. We have only been a full-service restaurant for a year–before that, Salaam was a hookah bar known as Shishah Cafe, which mainly had flavored tobaccos smoked from hookahs, and a few sandwiches and salads and mezes to snack on.

But then, a smoking ban went through for all restaurants, (which Hilarie, the owner of Shishah/Salaam voted for–as did I), and so Salaam was born.

And I am very, very glad it was born, because it is the best job I have ever had, hands down. I have so much fun working there it is hard to express it. The staff is great, the atmosphere is friendly and upbeat and everyone brings a “can-do” attitude to their work that is amazing. I love everything about it. (Except, I would like a bigger kitchen. Someday. I have faith.)

Which brings me to the next honor.

In the Places category, we placed second in “Best Place To Work,” right behind Ohio University. (OU has better job benefits, it is true, but we have a hell of a lot more fun at Salaam.)

And in the People category, Hilarie Burhans, one of the owners of Salaam and the other chef at the reins of our wee kitchen, tied for first place as “Coolest Person in Athens County.” I think it is because not only is she a really cool lady, but also because she plays a mean clawhammer banjo, sings beautifully, owns the best ethnic restaurant in Athens, cooks like an angel, and used to live in a cave in the desert. (That cave bit is why she got my vote. That is too cool.)

Both Hil and I got our pictures in the paper, though I think hers is better than mine. But then, she’s smiling in hers, and I am talking in mine, so there we have it. If I yammered less and smiled more, maybe I would look better in pictures.

But this is just too terrific, because I feel very strongly that everyone at Salaam: the cooks, the servers, the prep cooks (which includes Morganna), the bellydancers, the chefs, the owners–we all work very hard in order to make this little restaurant a very special place that offers the best possible food in a unique atmosphere that is evocative of an exotic time and place that exists in everyone’s imagination. And I am so proud to be part of it.

So, there you have it. This is why I am floating around on a cloud right now, and am doing the Happy Barbara Dance, though I am doing it perched on the couch while I recuperate from the most evil sinus infection that came out of the blue like quick death from above early Sunday morning. I basically woke up with a headache and neckache so bad that I was worried I had meningitis. The only thing that gave me comfort was that when I could stand to blow my nose–even though it felt like my eyes would pop out if I tried to, was that the evidence in the kleenex pointed toward a sinus infection, and not a swollen brain and spinal cord.

It was the worst pain in my life. The migraines and sinus infections of my youth were nothing compared to this. And labor pains–shoot–I never used any anesthesia for either of my babies, and I was fine. Yeah, it hurt. So what?

Not this. This made me cry. Except that if I cried, it made it worse, so I just cussed.

A lot.

So, I went to Urgent Care, it being a Sunday, and the doctor treated it aggressively, noting that as fast as it came up, and the evidence that it was in every sinus cavity in my head and was too close to my brain for her or my comfort, that a heavy shot of steroids and another of antibiotics was necessary. And then, she wrote scrips for more steroids and more antibiotics to be taken orally for the next week.

So I went home, went to bed and slept for like–oh, four or five hours and woke up and the pain was gone.

Prednisone is my friend. I have never taken a steroid before, but it helped. Amazingly so. But, I have to say that the little pills of it–no matter how fast I swallow them, they dissolve in my mouth, which tastes godawful terrible, horrible and monstrously icky.

But I don’t care, because it is killing the evil which does not sleep in my nose.

So, I am having to restrict my dancing to the couch, but believe me, I am bouncing up and down merrily, and every now and then, I have a jovial giggle or two, out of sheer, bubbling joy.

This is one of my all-time favorite dishes from Northern Italy, but I have never cooked it before now.

Which is sort of weird, but when I first had it, back when I lived in Providence, Rhode Island, I didn’t have to make it. I could just walk into any number of little restaurants up on Federal Hill and order it, and it was always good. Some versions were better than others, yes, but all of them were good, and some of them were great. But good, better or great, this lovely dish was so common and so moderately priced–I just never got around to making it.

Until Zak reminded me of it, today.

And then, I had to have it.

This lovely to look at pink, green and cream dish is just the sort of heavenly food that I like to think that the angels painted by Raphael and Donatello eat when they are not posing for portraits. It is just that heavenly–it somehow manages to taste both rich and light at the same time. It is the kitchen magician’s art which makes it so, I suspect.

I didn’t bother consulting a recipe or anything. It is pretty much a cream-based pasta sauce that has onions, a bit of garlic, prosciutto, and peas cooked in butter, with or without some wine. The cream is reduced until it coats the back of a spoon, and then some delicious Parmigiano-Reggiano is grated into it, and that is it. Oh, some herbs might go in it, some black pepper, or a few chili flakes, but really, this is all there is to it.

It is beyond simple, which is good, but it also means that you have to use the best ingredients you can find and afford to make it.

Now, a true purist would say that if I am going to use the real Parma prosciutto and Parmigiano-Reggiano, I should only use fresh, just picked baby peas in season, too.

Well, I have had some rather crappy fresh peas, and many really good frozen ones, and frankly, I know for a fact that those restaurants in Providence used frozen peas, so that is what I used, too. So long as you choose the smallest, youngest frozen peas you can, and don’t overcook them, the dish will be delicious.

The only other ingredient of note for this dish is the cream.

I was privileged to be able to use fresh, raw cream this time around, although it was in a form which I have never seen before, and likely won’t see again.

It was essentially cream which had most of the water removed from it; Victoria, one of the owners and operators of Snowville Creamery, had called us last Saturday to ask if we were going to be at the farmer’s market–which we weren’t, as Kat was sick with the croup. When Zak told her why not, she said she would come by and bring us something–apparently the cream separator had gotten a bit fractious and had over-spun the milk, producing cream that was somewhere between fluid cream and butter.

She left it on our porch in a cooler.

When I got up and tasted it–it had the flavor of liquid cream, but had the texture of whipped butter. It was rich and delicious–so good that we spread some on toast made from fresh bread from the Village Bakery down the hill and topped it with strawberry preserves for an amazing breakfast.

I ended up using a good amount of it in this pasta sauce, and was thrilled to discover that it is basically pre-reduced cream. I could just plop a couple scoops of it into the pan with the other ingredients, stir it until it melts and then add the cheese and the pasta and it was done. No simmering to reduce.

I’m of the opinion that if I could have a small tub of that in the fridge at all times, it would certainly make saucemaking simpler. Maybe they have a future with the product, if not for home use, for the restaurant industry.

In the end, this pasta is an easy, delicious dish for a quick supper, especially if paired with a simple green salad. The sugar of the peas brings out the inherent sweetness in the prosciutto, while the dry cured ham’s saltiness seasons the dish perfectly. Caramelized onions deepen the flavors, a bit of sherry or dry white wine adds a bit of complexity, and the cheese gives a hint of hazel and pine nut flavor to the finished dish. The cream binds everything together in a smooth finish, while the herbs and pepper add tiny aromatic sparks to the whole.

And it looks pretty, too–the green peas contrast perfectly with the pink prosciutto; giving the dish a spring-like freshness that is hard to resist.

While fettuccine is traditional, I like to use campanelle–the bellflower shaped pasta for two reasons. One, I like the way that the fluted, floriferous tubes look in the bowl and two, those pretty ruffles catch the rich sauce and trap the peas and bits of prosciutto perfectly, making the sauce much easier to eat than it is when made with fettuccine.

Besides, campanelle is fun to say, and the romantic flowered shape keeps it well within my imagining of it being the perfect angelic meal.

If you wanted to make a vegetarian version of this, I suggest substituting some flavorful mushrooms for the prosciutto, like dried rehydrated porcini or shiitake. Soak the mushrooms in the wine you want to use to deglaze the pan, and then when you go to cut them up, squeeze the excess liquid back into the bowl and cut the mushrooms into thin slices. The reserved soaking liquid you can either filter through a coffee filter to remove any dirt or sediment or you can just pour right from the bowl it is in, being certain to leave the last bits of the liquid, with the bits of grit and grunge, in the bowl.

Pasta With Prosciutto, Peas And Parmigiano
Ingredients:

Serves four to six people, depending on appetites.

I admit it.

I used to be a hater.

I used to hate brussels sprouts, and could never understand why in the world anyone in possession of their senses would ever want to eat one, much less more than one of these mutant, alien miniature cabbage heads. They were mushy, watery, bitter, and smelled like–well, like a dirty toilet, as far as I could tell.

They were the devil.

And I have to tell you, that the salad at a meal I ate last night at the best fine dining restaurant here in Athens, Zoe, converted me from a hater of all things brussels sprouts, to a lover of that bonny wee brassica.

It turns out that everyone in my childhood days just overcooked brussels sprouts. And apparently, the longer you cook them, especially if you are boiling them, the more bitter they become–probably because the sugar is leached out into the cooking water, leaving only the smelly and nasty sulphur compounds behind.

But about that salad, pictured above.

The chef/owner of Zoe, Scott Bradley, is a genius. His salads are always delicious, but the above combination of steamed brussels sprouts, prosciutto, dates and thinly sliced red onions tossed with a traditional, garlicky Caesar salad dressing was amazing. The textures were perfect counterpoints with the tender-crisp sprouts, the crunchy onions, the slightly chewy prosciutto and the sticky dates–and the flavors were just perfect. From salt to honey sweet to sharp–this salad had it all, and I gobbled down a good half of it before I remembered I had a camera with me and snapped a quick picture of what remained on my plate.

I ordered the salad, because I was out with my in-laws, and my father-in-law, Karl, has been telling me for years that there was absolutely no reason in the world why I should dislike brussels sprouts. So, I was determined to try them in his presence–not to prove him wrong, but to prove him right. I wanted him to be there to see me lose my last culinary prejudice against an innocent vegetable. (My other childhood vegetable foes have long become my pals: peas and I made our peace when I learned how to cook them with Indian spices, and beets became my buddies when I was pregnant with Morganna, and out of the blue, I started craving them.)

And so, I tried it, and liked it. And I told our waitress about how good it was, and told her that Scott had made me a brussels sprouts convert. She admitted that she never much cared for them herself, but on my recommendation, she would try the salad. I sure hope she liked it as much as I did.

The sprouts didn’t taste bitter and awful. They were like a combination of collard greens and bok choy with a little bit of hazelnut thrown in for good measure. They were nutty and sweet and lightly crunchy and tender at the same time.

Amazed, I had Morganna try them, and she pronounced them delicious. And Zak–he liked them too.

Oh, frabjous day, calloo callay!

So, of course, tonight, I had to figure out how to cook my very own brussels sprouts. I decided to try a stir fry with onions, garlic, Hunan salted chilies, fermented black beans, tofu and carrots.

It turned out to be mighty tasty.

I did cook this recipe a bit topsy-turvy from the way I usually do a stir-fry: I put the brussels sprouts in the wok right after the aromatics were cooked, so that they would soak up plenty of of the onion, garlic, black bean and chile flavor, and could sear and brown against the hot surface of the wok without any other major ingredients in the way. After the sprouts where half-tender, I removed them, and added the tofu to the wok, and continued cooking as normal, adding the carrots next, and then returning the brussels sprouts to the wok, before deglazing, so that the quickly reducing wine would steam them to perfection, and they would get thoroughly coated in the glaze it produced.

As fine and tasty as this recipe is, I cannot wait to roast them in the oven and season them with ghee, panch phoron and lemon.

And of course, when I do make that, I will present it here and show you all how.

Stir Fried Tofu with Brussels Sprouts and Carrots
Ingredients:

Note: Sweet red peppers would be great added to this. Only, I didn’t have any. But you could have some, and try it out. I bet fresh or dried shiitake would be great with this, too.