Redemption!

After the disastrous green stew, I needed to pick a recipe that couldn't miss. Of course, I said this to my husband while we were eating and he said, "Wait, you thought that almonds, pistachios, raisins and dried figs tossed with linguine couldn't miss?" Correct. Fortunately for all of us, Beggar's Linguini (pg 370) was absolutely delicious.

The recipe requires 1.5 sticks of butter, which I just couldn't bring myself to use. I used a stick plus a chunk, which somehow sounded healthier in my head (though, surely, not on my hips.) Honestly, I'm not sure what the extra butter would have contributed. It turned out plenty buttery as it was. It was kind of difficult to incorporate all the tasty bits into the pasta, so maybe the extra butter would have greased the noodles that extra little bit to make them less clingy.

The element that made this dish unique and wonderful was the orange zest shaved on top of each serving. It tied all the sweet and salty and nutty flavors together and elevated the flavor, which would have been good, to a much more interesting, lovely mouthful of food. Many, many lovely mouthfuls of food. Dorie warns that this doesn't reheat well, so to eat up. I did. I'm going to explode now.

Conclusion: LOVE. This is a dangerous dish to enjoy so much. We're heading out of town for a few days, but when I come back, I need to seek out some healthy options from this book.