Pasta Con Rapini

  We woke up to half sun, half rain this morning. Luckily, we were able to take a nice long morning walk in between the showers. Headed out early, got the job done.

  Back at The Nut, we decided we would head to Chiusi for the weekly market, despite the intermittent showers.

  I've been looking for another pair of simple black boots. Chiusi market has lots of clothing and shoe vendors...I didn't find the boots of my dreams, alas.

  What I did find was a really great zip up sweater for one euro (!), and rapini.

  We love rapini, which is sort of like a very wild broccolini, only bitter and, well, wild.

  We did more shopping, headed home and later in the day found ourselves at Bar Gallo.

 It was super quiet, with just a couple of regular locals, Aldo, and us. Nice.

  Johnny wanted to work on some drawings, and I dozed as I tried to read my book. Perfection.

  I mentioned to Aldo at one point that I had bought some rapini. Before I knew it, he and his sweet daughter-in-law, Lorena, were giving me the low down on how to make a traditional Sicilian pasta dish with it. Lorena comes from Sicily, so I was all ears.

  Here is what you do, my dear readers, for an amazingly simple and tasty dinner-

Wash your rapini well to get any grit out.

Chop off the hollow/woody ends.

Chop the rapini coarsely.

Boil in well salted water for five minutes. Five minutes was perfect
to soften all the stems, etc.

   At this point, Aldo made it very clear that I should rinse the rapini in very cold water and squeeze the heck out of it. Really squeeze it well, get that water out of it.

Squeeze it, baby!

Squeeze it good!

  I ended up with a small amount, but enough for two people. I only used half a package of penne pasta, so it worked out fine.

  If you were serving four, you would need two bunches of rapini for a whole package of pasta.

  In the meantime, I was toasting some garlic (four good cloves) in olive oil with a touch of hot pepper oil that Lorena made and Aldo gave to us, just for this recipe.

  A little goes a long way! It is hot!

I chopped the rapini into smaller pieces.

Add rapini to the warm oil to heat through.

Give it a good stir...

  In the meantime, cook your pasta. I used penne, because that's what I had in the pantry. Traditionally this dish calls for orecchiette. Also, I used the already hot water from cooking the rapini. It adds extra flavor, and was already well salted.

Have some good parmesan ready.

Add your cooked pasta to the pan with rapini.

Toss well.

Serve it up with a good dose of parmesan and really good olive oil from Umbria.

A little pepper won't hurt...

Serve in front of a warm fire with wine of your choice.
Red for him, white for me. Enjoy!

That was one of the best pasta dishes I ever made.
Thanks Aldo! Thanks, Lorena!