Disaster and dine

Some nights, dinner appears effortlessly out of a seemingly empty fridge, sometimes as simple as a baked sweet potato and a pile of roasted green beans. Some nights, I like to put a little more effort in, perhaps even following a recipe, like the night before last when I set out to make a scrumptious sounding Hazelnut & Chard Ravioli Salad from 101 Cookbooks.

So, I had beautiful goat cheese ravioli from Giacomo's, and appealing substitutions of pine nuts and mustard greens from the market. It's a rather long recipe - not complicated, just plenty of steps involving plenty of pans. I started with the butternut squash croutons... which never quite crisped... but no worries, butternut squash is one of the candies of the veggie world regardless of texture. Moving on.

Sauteing onions, check. Ravioli slowly boiling themselves to the top of the pot, check. Time to wash the greens.

Dirt, my friends, comes part and parcel with shopping at the farmers' market. You wouldn't know it from a grocery store, but most of our food does, in fact, originate in soil. Washing greens, then, is an endurance test: dunk the torn, de-stemmed leaves in a bowl of cold water, swish to dislodge dirt, lift the greens into a colander, clean out the wash bowl and repeat (and repeat and repeat).

As I tore these mustard greens, however, they seemed a little dirtier than usual, with large flakes of dirt shooting across my counter and sticking to my hands. I covered the first bowl in cold water and saw all the flakes float to the surface... some of them looked a little frayed at the edges. I scooped up a palm-full of dirt, held my hand practically to my nose, and realized that the specs of dirt I had been diligently attempting to wash away were in fact tiny bugs, millions of them.

Now, I have certainly picked a bug or two out of my produce before and continued my merry meal prep because it's like the slow foodies like to say: the only thing worse than finding half a worm in your apple is eating apples no self-respecting worm would bore into. I'm paraphrasing.

But millions of tiny bugs coating each of my dozens of mustard leaves? My apologies to the farmer who sweated over that greens patch (and only charged $1 for the entire grocery bag of greens - come on, guys - ask for what your food is worth!!) but everything was swept into the trash. I submerged my dishcloth in water to drown the remaining bugs, then had Rob give me a full-body scan in the hopes that being reassured by my one true love that bugs were not, in fact, covering every inch of my body would keep me from having to take a scalding shower where I scrub myself with a brillo. Beyond a couple moments of feeling imaginary pairs of miniature legs climbing me, it worked pretty well.

Once the bugs had been dispatched with, I decided that sauteed portobello mushrooms would be a workable replacement for the missing bulk of our dinner. These were also a farmers' market purchase but a week and a half old so the shrooms had already lost a good bit of moisture, on their way to becoming dried shrooms. But it's getting late (even for us, who eat after 9 more often than we'd like) and we're hungry so I just chop them and throw them in a lightly oiled pan.

Shortly thereafter, as I was grating lemon zest and parmesan for the garnish when I noticed the acrid smell of the mushrooms burning. Not just a little scorched but beyond repair and taking my pan with it. Yup, an operator error stole my last ditch effort at salvaging our meal.

So there we were with six large, cooked raviolis, a pan of sauteed butternut squash and caramelized onions, toasted pine nuts, grated lemon zest and some shredded parmesan cheese, proving yet again that some of the best meals (and ideas in general) are borne of mistakes. The greens or mushrooms would have added a lovely and nutritionally-packed element, but by piling all the ingredients on the ravioli, we had an amazing meal filled with distinct, light flavors.

Hurrah for happy culinary endings!