The Lame Chef: PS, I love you ~ a new Pasta e Fagioli

I get paid to cook people dinner. It's what I do and it's something I enjoy, but there is nothing more enjoyable than cooking for my friends. Particularly when I'm in Palm Springs with a cocktail in one hand and a bag of farmers market veggies in the other. I'm speaking of Brad and Denis' Pam Springs abode. Yes, I said Pam Springs. Not to mention access to the pied-a-terre cupboard of holiday crackers, chips, salsa, pasta, and quality canned tomatoes and beans... a list of unmarried ingredients that become my favorite challenge.

In Pam Springs, limitations can create great meals.

Fortunately, scrap-cooking, as I call it, is one of my favorite ways to cook. Forget the hours of menu writing, shopping lists and grocery store lines, it's so much more pleasurable to just cook what is right in front of you. Isn't that how most people cook, anyway? And isn't that how most heritage dishes came to be? What was available, what was at hand became breakfast, lunch, dinner. And if it was simple, and memorable, it would be written down and repeated until someone somewhere called it by name: "let's have pasta carbonara!".

So, to be more specific, if there is celery root and pasta, well, you'll have celery root and pasta. And if a can of cannellini beans and an egg are waiting there, then they should certainly join the party. And that's how small miracles happen; one after the other-- the vegetables are ribboned and roasted while the pasta cooks; and the basil and lemon zest become pesto without garlic and parmesan. The egg is stirred and the beans are warmed and the whole lot of ingredients marry into one miraculous dish. And before your dinner guests know it, they are setting the table for a cupboard feast of something old yet new: pasta e fagioli meets carbonara, sorta...

Oh, and how it all makes perfect delicious sense in a warm dinner bowl with a Cheese Crisp cracker pangrattato; a lemony salad of frisee; and a Riedel of red...

Here we go...

introducing, Pam Springs finest... NOT brad and denis' home... yet

let's get started

always go to your farmers market and take home something in season, especially if you don't know what to make of it...

celery root, celery, carrots and green onion make for a simple vegetable roast... a little olive oil, bay leaf, salt and pepper; and whatever fresh or dried herbs on hand...

roast in a 450' oven for 15 minutes, while you cook your pasta...

chop your basil, lemon zest, celery leaves, what have you, and season with salt and pepper; don't forget a good lug of olive oil...

heat quickly in a large skillet with some white wine, stock, water, whatever..

heat the beans with the roasted veg until the skillet is nice and hot...

add the cooked pasta to the hot skillet of pesto... add 1/2 cup of pasta water...

have a large, warm pasta bowl ready, with one beaten egg...

once the pasta is combined with the steaming skillet of pesto, dump the pasta into the large pasta bowl with egg and stir quickly and evenly... adding the roasted vegetables...

everything needs to be hot!