Angel’s hair pasta with baby beans
Special food has as much to do with visuals as it has with expensive ingredients. I guess this is one of the reasons why so many bright young chefs have so much fun fiddling with food. The consequences have been wonderful, save a minor period of misuse, and a major attack of misjudgement by many critics. Nouvelle cuisine is gorgeous in its ultimate application, but unfortunately it became saddled with tiny portions, bright colours and weird flavours rather than perfect combinations and simple, thoughtful, attractive presentation. Attractive in the sense of bees and flowers, boys and girls.
We’ve been through all that, and back to hearty flavours and exotics, but cooking is far better for its excursion into simplicity and raw, unadulterated, understood flavours.
I am reminded of this every year, when the beans we grow start to do what the packets say they will, and produce large top and tail ‘em beans. Well, they would if you let them. Not me. I’m out there from the first sight of subtle white flowers, poking here and there for any hint of bean as it pushes clear of the flower in search of its new life.
No patience here. When the beans have reached no more than 10 centimetres, grab them, and you have the basis of the most wonderful dish.
I reckon that’s what the home garden is for. Use it for its raw, pure product. Use it as soon as you can, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
a few drops of balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup best olive oil
salt
black pepper
hefty piece of Parmesan
a tiny amount of the thinnest pasta you can make or buy - There is no doubt this dish is greatly enhanced if you make your own; if you can’t, go for the thinnest spaghetti, or the pasta labelled maccheroni alia chi- tarra,the regional spaghetti from the Abruzzo, east of Rome.
50g butter, cut into rough cubes
small bunch of tarragon, leaves pulled from the stem
8 baby beans per person, preferably with a little white flower still attached
1
You will need two pots of salted boiling water.
2
Mix the vinegar and the oil, together with a little salt and black pepper, at the bottom of a middle-sized bowl. Taste for seasoning and set aside.
3
Grate the Parmesan roughly, along the broadest edge of the grater.
4
Cook the pasta. Your own shouldn’t take more than 60 seconds. If you’re using packet pasta, follow the instructions.
5
Drain, and toss the pasta through the butter and tarragon leaves, until the butter melts. Add the grated cheese and mix through. Turn the pepper mill over the lot for about 8 seconds.
6
Toss the beans into the boiling water for no more than 45 seconds. Drain, and toss into the oil and vinegar mix.
7
Place the pasta delicately into the middle of an attractive plate and toss the beans every which way over the top.
WINE: This is a subtle dish – it needs a subtle, delicate wine. Try a young Rhine riesling or, if you can, a German riesling from Moselle or an Alsace riesling.