My friend Kevin ordered orecchiette by accident a few weeks ago at an Italian restaurant, mistaking it for a stuffed pasta shape (agnolotti, likely), and this morning food minimalist Mark Bittman posted a recipe on his NYT blog for a frittata heavy on the vegetables, light on the eggs.

Tonight, both decisions informed an orecchiette I made, heavy on the vegetables, light on the pasta. This pasta shape pairs with a green vegetable, so rainbow chard and baby bok choy provided the color, with chopped onion cooked until translucent in the rendered bacon fat and Parmesan rounding out the dish.

Orecchiette means “little ears,” and this time in the summer we can really listen to fresh corn—not popping, but lined up in pearly rows of yellow and ivory—the scraped kernels find their way inside the pasta shells. For balance, I ladled a little fennel confit on top and, instead of a sauce, I stirred in a bit of butter I made earlier this week, for something heavy on the simplicity…

Related posts:

1. pppsst: spsp (summer pesto squash pasta)
2. tubes and carbonara
3. a justified and ancient grain in rotund squash

1. Mica:
   July 11th, 2009 at 8:24 am

   What a simultaneously beautiful and adorable dish! I am definitely craving diminutive pasta ears now.

   And you made butter? You never cease to amaze, Kristen.

2. Kristen:
   July 11th, 2009 at 5:19 pm

   Mica, I am going to think of your “diminutive pasta ears” phrase every time I use orecchiette :) Making butter is so easy! And really brings out the beauty of good cream, has a very soft texture. That’s on the list when I come visit you in Chicago or you visit here–

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Posted by Kristen Taylor on Friday, July 10th, 2009, 11:20 pm * Filed in Food. * Tags: brooklyn, cooking, Food, kristen, kthread, ktichen, orecchiette, pasta, taylor. Follow responses through the RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback from your own site.