Penne with lemons

Corso Vitt. Emanuele, Napoli, May 11, 2015—

AFTER ALL, WE HAVE a kitchen here; why not make use of it? And, since it's our wedding anniversary, why not cook together?

Cook rinsed and dried the arugula for salad, and cooked the penne, bought at the alimentario up the Corso. Meanwhile I minced a couple of cloves of garlic very small — my Opinel pocketknife comes in handy for such things — and softened them without browning them in good organic olive oil from the local supermarket. (Carrefour, if you want to know.)

While the garlic was softening, I chopped a lemon rather roughly but still in fairly small pieces, and added it to the garlic and oil, along with salt; then I added maybe half a glass of white wine. I cooked this just enough to soften the lemon rind; more cooking would have brought out the bitterness of the white pulp, which I didn't bother to cut away.

Toward the end, aftee taking the photo above, I added some red pepper flakes, since they were handy. The penne were done by that time, and Cook drained them, then blended the lemon sauce with a tablespoonful or so of the pasta-cooking water and added that back to the penne.

We grated Parmigiano on top of our plates. Delicious! Afterward, the arugula, dressed with lemon juice and olive oil, and a couple of See's chocolates, since it's a special day.

Biancolella, Casa d'Ambra (Ischia), 2014: soft, very slightly sweet, fruity, quite sound and well balanced, forward but with some finish, reminiscent of (but quite different from) some Vouvrays.
☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants