During a long drive recently i was listening to Bill Bufford’s Heat on CDs. I read the book a while ago but it was fun to listen to the author himself. I reached home on the pasta chapter and got so inspired that immediately opened Batali’s Molto Mario of fresh pasta section. And so the dinner was inevitably based on a recipe there: Fettuccine al Limone, with the simple but irresistible ingredient list: 1 red onion, 3 jalapenos, zest and juice of 3 lemons and a stick of butter, and fettuccine of course. Batali introduces the recipe with the following words: "I have made the very unItalian addition of jalapenos – and feel it works to great success. But then, I am a serious fan of Mex-Italo cooking so often found at "family meals" in great Italian restaurant kitchens in the United States".
I was tempted to decrease this crazy amount of lemon juice but then decided to trust the master, and was rewarded – pasta came out amazingly good, the acidity playing nicely with hot chiles against the richness of butter and fresh pasta.
Next morning fashioned the leftovers into puffy pancakes, inspired by another recipe from the same Mario’s cookbook.
High time to finally dust off my pasta maker.
