Project Primevera: Part 1
My vegetable garden isn’t doing that well these days. What was once a boxed delight of semi-thriving zucchini, watermelon and eggplant plants has been pared down by blistering hot summer days and freezing winter nights to just three eggplant plants (that aren’t doing that well now). Because I suffer from acute laziness I still needed a good reason to tear up and replant the garden. After all, the eggplants could come back any day now…I hope.
I got my reason when Mike threw down the gauntlet. Challenging Stephan and I to make Pasta Primevera from scratch. I threw all caution to the wind and accepted detailed be damned.
Of course, as they say, the devil is in the details. I had no idea what Pasta Primavera was. There’s no reference to it in any of Ange’s syack of Italio-centric cookbooks. A quick visit to Wikipedia and the Taste website and I had my answer:
Pasta with vegetables? Hell, I could do that.
We’ve got until the end of November to get the dish finalised, so the first step was to figure out what ingredients I could grow and what would need to be be purchased further down the track.
I’m only using the Taste recipe as a basic guide. Cream with vegetables seems a little too weird for my palette. Primavera may be an Italian-American dish, with an emphasis on the American, but I want to put more focus on the Italian side. That means squash and snow peas are most definitely out. Nobody likes squash anyway, and snow peas are a predominately Asian flavour, not Italian.
Off the top of my head I can think of six ingredients I want in my Primavera: zucchini, asparagus, chilli, garlic, basil and sage. The “rules” stipulate that all ingredients, sauce and pasta alike, must be sourced from places in this order of importance: Grown > Farmer’s Market > Organic Store > Supermarket. The Gardenate calendar suggests I’ve got just enough time to plant zucchini and basil. Chilli plants I have. Asparagus takes over two years to grow and sage doesn’t even make an appearance on the calendar.
So already I have a fair idea of what I’m going to do. First thing is to hit Bunnings for supplies (today seeds, manure, potting mix) then I’ve got a long productive afternoon tilling soil and planting the seeds of this project.
RSS 2.0
October 4th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
I know it’s not really an “authentic” Italian dish. I’m sure I saw a similar dish once that was – or claimed to be – authentic, the main ingredient (besides the pasta) was peas.
I figured it was also a good starting point as it doesn’t seem like an overly difficult recipe. The Ruhlman.com BLT Challenge used a simple recipe and if we made it too difficult we’d probably never finish it.
Maybe we should have a get together at the end and bring our pastas along too, even if they’re the leftover versions.
October 6th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Peas tend to pop up in a lot of risotto and lasagne dishes, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they made an appearance in a pasta dish.
I like the idea of some sort of final taste test. Something to think about towards the end of the project.