Today’s lunch was farfalle pasta with the pork & radicchio ragu which was the leftover from the dinner the evening before. I improvised the recipe using the generous amount of pork slices we received from our dear friends, a lovely family who live next door with whom we became friends through our daughter’s school. They apparently received a huge amount of pork as gift (quite common in Japan to send food as gift), and they kindly shared some with us.
Apart from the pork, there was some leftover radicchio I used for salad the previous day and some cherry tomatoes in the fridge. The three ingredients reminded me of this simple yet highly tasty radicchio risotto I once ate in a small Italian city of Marostica, possibly more than ten years ago. It was the first time for me to eat cooked radicchio – it was delicious with some bitterness and hint of buttery & nutty flavour. And I remember the colours – this dark shades of red sauce on my plate, contrasting beautifully with the white of grated parmiggiano, and opaque steam coming out of the freshly cooked risotto… a divine dish.
The taste came out quite differently for my sauce however, because I used a lot more pork than I can remember from the risotto I had eaten years ago. That’s why I served it with pasta rather than rice, since I thought the meaty flavoring was a bit too heavy for risotto. Nevertheless it turned around to be great ragu, and moreover I enjoyed trying to replicate the dish I had tasted years ago on my own, this time for my dearest family.
SMALL TOKYO KITCHEN 