Week 6, Cooking Day 4: Fettucine with Asparagus and Ginger Cream Sauce w/ Orange-Olive Salad

After last night's late night shenanigans, I set out with a game plan tonight that I would make something exciting that also wouldn't keep me up washing dishes at 2 a.m. Pulling out a cookbook my mom gave me a while back, I found an interesting seeming recipe:

Fettucine With Asparagus and Ginger Cream Sauce
3 large shallots
2 tablespoons coarsely grated ginger
16 ounces asparagus
2 tablespoons olive oil
3/4 cup ricotta cheese
3.4 cup plain yogurt
6 ounces fresh fettucine
2 ounces Parmigiano Reggiano

With Orange-Olive Salad
2 eating oranges, peeled and sectioned
12 large Greek olives, packed in oil
Drips of olive oil

I've never tried to make anything like this dish before. I've definitely eaten plenty of food in the vicinity, but it feels like i've almost specifically never tried to make a dish like this before. Also, until a few years ago, I adamantly disavowed olives and asparagus, but as for some reason I felt this recipe calling me when I saw it in the book.

It turned out to be relatively easy to make as well, metered out in simple steps and requiring nothing more complicated than trying to time the steps in a fashion where each runs one to the next, ie simple child cooking stuff. But the result was tasty and off-my-typically beaten path. I particularly enjoyed that the sauce was ricotta-yogurt, giving the dish a somewhat more Mediterranean complemented especially by the excellent orange-olive salad. This salad was ridiculously simple--peeled and sectioned oranges, combined with tasty Greek olives and dashed with olive oil, but it also presented lovely and unfamiliar flavor combinations that made my palatte excited.

Coupled with the wine Suze brought, i'd say the dinner was exactly the type of meal I'd hoped for and right now I feel pretty great. Now onto tomorrow night, risotto.

Pictures:


Sous chef Suz preparing the orange for me.



The saute immediately after adding yogurt-ricotta mix.


Voila! Fettucine with Asparagus and Ginger Cream sauce.


The yummy orange-olive salad, up close.


Suz is freaked out about eating, ginger, olives and oranges all at once.


Messy kitchen, post-cooking.