A few weeks ago I had a lovely walk and picnic lunch with my friend Amy. The heart of that lunch was a simple sauteed broccolini that she made. It was so good it’s been haunting me ever since.
Two weekends ago I did some air travel with my kids. We spent three days away from home and while I did my best to find ways for us to eat real food on the trip we still consumed a little bit more junk than I would have liked. I got home feeling greasy and generally gross. And I was longing for vegetables.
So, the next day while menu planning for the week I knew I was going to make vegetable-centric meals and that it was time to revisit that broccolini I’d had with Amy. As perfectly simply and simply perfect as it was I knew if I was going to pass it off as a meal in and of itself I was going to have to jazz it up a bit. I was vegetable deprived enough that I just kept imagining beautiful piles of green vegetables along side it and I had a bag of Frenched green beans in the fridge just begging to be added into the mix.
I threw in some asparagus (mostly because I like things in threes) and then somehow landed on the idea of adding pancetta, walnuts, and blue cheese. Let’s just say that in my kitchen a star was born. Most people will want to serve this as a side dish, but I have to tell you I ate it as a meal in and of itself… just a big heaping pile on my plate, still warm, but cooling to room temperature as I ate (the temperature change didn’t hurt it in the least).
Sounds good. Let’s have it next week!
Yummm…I love vegetable sautees, i eat them as meals too. Adding cheese and pancetta is amazing sounding, yumm!