I’ve often written about how Ingredients shape the decision about what to make for dinner. Such was the case with this dinner on Thursday night. I had been shopping at Idylwilde last week and bought just a few slices of Speck, a cured and smoked ham (similar to Prosciutto) from the Tyrol region in Italy. After reviewing several recipes online, I settled on this simple pasta dish as a point of departure.

With this as a guide, I chose to add several more ingredients that I was eager to use before they went bad, They included baby artichokes, a small piece of a fennel bulb, red cabbage, and some Radicchio di Treviso. I had a bag of spinach in this category, too, but I cooked that and saved for another day. While the pasta was cooking, I blanched each of these for about 3-4 minutes, and then I sautéed them in butter and olive oil, adding cream a little at a time, until it was all nice and tender.

I loved the bright rich colors that emerged. When the pasta was ready, it went into the skillet with the vegetable sauce and was thoroughly mixed to merge the flavors. The last steps were to sprinkle a few chopped Taggiasche olives and grated Parmesan cheese on top. The wine was also unusual and very good. It was a 2020 Vespolina Colline Novaresi by Francesco Brigatti in Alto Piemonte.

Eclectic and delicious. I would rate it as “best meal of the month”, I think. Even my wife liked it.