Pasta Disasta
When our cooking is good, it is really, really good; when it is bad, it is horrid. Truly, this was a mess.
First of all, we had no whipping cream for the cream sauce for Linguine with Red Peppers, Green Onions and Pine Nuts. I suggested we use evaporated milk instead, which I was sure could be substituted. About half-way through the simmering/thickening process, Marc started reminiscing about his Mom buying evaporated milk for him as a house-warming gift, so that she could drink it with her tea when she came to visit. That was about… 7 years ago and Marc has moved a few times since then. This can of evaporated milk might very well be that same house-warming gift. Hard to say, really, because it kind of clumped up around the edges of the pan and I don’t know if that was because we were using evaporated milk or if it was because we were using ancient evaporated milk. Regardless, the sauce was a mess but we were hungry and committed.
The peppers were fine but the green onions were pretty sad, having had to sit at the bottom of the vegetable crisper for about 5 days. The addition of parmesan and pine nuts to the sauce and whole wheat linguine was more a waste of good ingredients than helpful and tasty additions. Not even fresh pepper and a big glass of wine (LoTengo) could rescue this pasta. We ate it anyway.
The good news is that we had some left-over sticky toffee pudding from when I made it on Monday night. Even a little rum sauce was leftover from that night which we applied in generous amounts to the warmed-up squares of cake.
Marc threw out the remaining portion of the disasta.