How do you do it? For Michael and Eva

I get this question a lot: how do you decide what to cook? How do you come up with recipes? Why do you decide to do one thing and not another?

Well, there isn't one answer to these questions. Any of them. But one answer is : I decide to cook certain things, based on what I see in restaurants. Sometimes, it's a dish that Guy and I have eaten, and sometimes, it's not. This is a case where we did NOT eat the dish, even though we wanted to .

We were at one of our favorite restaurants (Savoy), and the first course list was so good we wanted them all. Of course, we COULD have eaten just off of that list (I've done it before), but then we would have missed the main dishes - and they sounded SO GOOD. So, one of the first courses we did not eat was "fresh angel hair pasta with ramp butter sauce, parmesan and black pepper."

Hmmmm. The owner of Savoy pioneered seasonal cooking in New York City, so I know what he was thinking: ramps are here, use them. The cheese and pepper combination is emblematic of one of the simplest, and most challenging of Italian pasta dishes: caciopepe, which is "Just" cacio cheese and black pepper tossed with fresh pasta. Easy, right? Go ahead and try it. The butter, I figured, was there because you have to cook the ramps.

So today, I got to work, and made this for lunch. I figured six ramps per person was plenty. I cut off the green leafy portion and sliced it, because it cooks faster than the long, tougher body. Then I took the little guys, and sliced them down the middle, lengthwise. I melted four tablespoons of butter in a big skillet and added the ramp bodies first, and cooked them at medium low heat for about two minutes. Then I added the greens, and cooked another two.
DONE.

Meanwhile, a pot of water was coming to a boil. When it did, in went a big tablespoon of salt, and then half a pound of tagliatelle, because that was the thinnest pasta I had. And while it cooked, I grated about two ounces of parmesan, and got my pepper mill ready.

When the pasta was just a touch too chewy, I pulled it out of the pot and dumped it into the skillet with the sauce. I added half a cup of the pasta water and then heated this all together. The way the starchy water and butter interacts never fails to fascinate me, and soon, the pasta fairly glistened with the butter that now stuck to it .

Off the heat, I added the parmesan and stirred everything together, and finished with the black pepper.

This was mighty fine eating for a seasonal lunch. It's not really "Italian," because Italy doesn't have ramps; however, they do have a wild hyacinth that is foraged, and if you happened to have those, you could probably use that instead.

So why is this for Michael and Eva? Well, a few nights ago, these folks came over for a cooking lesson. We were planning our actual dinner, and when they saw the ramps, and knew how seasonal and how limited their time was, they wanted them. And we cooked them with wild mustard greens, and the combination was really good. Both have "pledged" to get some ramps and use them. So, this post is for you folks. It's easy, it's tasty, and I bet you could double it without any trouble. You both have good knife skills, so the splitting of the ramps won't be any problem.

It's your dish now. Make it, eat it , enjoy it.