Friday, March 11, 2011

FFwD - Beggar's Linguine - err, Spaghetti



Betcha wondering what on earth is in the photograph at the top of this post?  It may look like something that was tossed out in the garbage pile in a back alley, but man, it tastes good.

This week's French Friday with Dorie recipe is Beggar's Linguine.  "Mendiant" in French means "beggar"; however, it also the name given to a disk of chocolate studded with different fruit and nuts to represent the four monastic orders of Domincans, Augustinians, Franciscans and Carmelites.  In this recipe, Dorie has taken the fruits and nuts from the mendiants and combined them with linguine instead of chocolate.  The dish is comprised of linguine covered in a browned butter sauce featuring pistachios, almonds, figs and raisins, then spiced up with parmesan and orange zest.  

Somehow, I imagined I bought squid ink linguine; however, when I went to make this dish, I realised that I had squid ink spaghetti.  It was too late to go to the store, so I forged ahead with my spaghetti.  In the end, I don't think it mattered - I loved the sweetness of the fruit against the nutty butter sauce and the crunch from the nuts.  I also thought that the zest added just the right amount of kick to the flavour.

To see what the other FFwD members thought of this dish, visit this week's LYL section on the FFwD website.  

18 comments:

  1. OMW, I am getting ingredients together right now to make this and I saw your photo and put the brakes on double fast as I know there is no way my guys will eat green pasta, or black pasta, etc. I read quickly to find out that you bought that on purpose and the recipe is just for regular colored pasta...thank goodness! Give me a heart attack...lol! I am looking forward to this one...with regular colored pasta. I would, however, be willing to taste yours and see what that is like and learn about that, too! Always learn something new over here! Now, back to reading the recipe and gathering my ingredients!

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  2. Does squid ink pasta have a different taste or is it just for the coloring?

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  3. Hi Lauren, I had the same question, but to be honest, it tastes like regular pasta to me, and the black just seems to be for effect.

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  4. I love the look of your squid ink pasta! And, I like how there's steam coming straight from your bowl!

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  5. Too funny! I strayed from the linguini as well and used buckwheat fettuccine. I was really surprised at how good this one was.

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  6. What a striking dish. I'm trying to imagine the flavour combination bt am struggling a little (possibly due to the fact I just ate a pile of Vegemite). Really interesting recipe.

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  7. Wow what a dish! I'd be so curious to try this because I've always thought of a mendiant as a very sweet thing but as a pasta dish why not? I mean if it has browned butter then it must be good :)

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  8. How funny - I've got a candied kumquat experiment in progress, and I was just thinking that I should try it out in mendiants if it comes out well. Now it seems that I could use the other dried fruit and nuts in dinner! :)

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  9. OMG - this sounds incredible and like nothing I have ever seen before! Very, very intrigued. The parmesan sounds a little odd with the rest of the ingredients but I'd definitely try it!

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  10. This one did not appeal to me at all (it was the raisins), but I keep seeing rave reviews. I'll have to give it a try. It looks so dramatic with the squid ink pasta too--fun!
    :)

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  11. Squid ink pasta?! That's a new one to me! I will try to see if we have it here because now I am curious how it tastes. I really loved the flavor of this dish.

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  12. It looks so dramatic with the black pasta! It's interesting to learn about the Mendiant - I've seen the chocolates, but didn't realize the story behind them.

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  13. The pasta sounds delicious but I am positive my children wil not eat them. They even reject whole wheat pasta.

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  14. I'm thinking this would be a fun dinner for St. Patrick's Day. The flavor sounds wonderful.

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  15. I have the same question as many of the others. What is squid ink pasta like? Never heard of it. Glad you liked the dish. I did too.

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  16. Thanks for the info on the squid ink pasta flavour (in the comments) we were going to trek out to Richmond for dinner one night to taste it. I love the look of the dish with it though. Definitely something to investigate in the future!

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  17. What an unusual dish - I'm sure once I had the first mouthful I'd be hooked but it sounds kinda odd!

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