More spring pasta

From last Saturday's market we took home more fava beans and English peas, which in traditional French and Italian recipes are often cooked together since they're in season at the same time.  The sweet peas make a nice complement to the earthy fava beans.  We like to make a simple spring pasta that combines both with a few sprigs of spring onion and/or spring garlic, which are among the most distinctive ingredients of this season, much sweeter and milder than their mature counterparts.


This week we also brought home garlic scapes, which we had to have explained to us.  They're apparently the flower-stalks of garlic plants, often cut off so the plant puts all its energy into making the plump bulbs that we usually use. But they actually have a mild garlicky flavor.

Blanche and peel the favas, then shell and blanche the peas lightly, and reserve.  Then lightly saute some chopped ramps and spring onions in olive oil and a bit of butter, not enough to brown them.  (In another season, you could just use chopped shallots.)  Add a few chopped tomatoes or a tablespoon or two of tomato paste.  (If you use fresh, they should be peeled and seeded.  Although we brought home some early tomatoes this week they weren't quite ripe enough for sauce.)

Then add a glug of white wine, and cook until it reduces to nothing.  Finally add about a quarter cup of cream, and simmer until slightly thickened into a pink creamy sauce.  That's almost it.  (This is another dish that could also have julienned proscuitto or other ham sauteed lightly, just before you add the onions.  We like the dish both this way and, as here, vegetarian.)

We use this sauce with home-made noodles, medium-thick.  Of course you could also use store-bought dried pasta: fettuccini or tagliotelli, or even a shaped pasta like penne or whatever — the Italians are notoriously inconsistent in their names for the myriad different forms of pasta they make.  At home, we cut them by hand so they are  irregular.  After all, as long as they're homemade (a restaurant might call them "hand-cut"), they may as well look that way.

Cook your pasta in boiling water until just barely done, then finish them in the pan with the sauce, adding about half a cup at least of grated cheese (Parmesan, Asiago, etc.) and about half a cup of pasta water; and tossing over high heat until the sauce is fairly dry and clinging to the pasta. 

This is a basic template for a pasta that could highlight almost any spring vegetable.  It's fine even with just a little spring onion or garlic, the tomatoes, cheese and cream.  Utter simplicity and pure pleasure.