After eating out all weekend (there was a 19^th wedding anniversary to be celebrated in our house, among other things) I finally got started on cooking all the good stuff I bought at market Saturday. Tomorrow we have company coming to help us eat the leg of lamb, which I will braise with many, many cloves of garlic and artichoke hearts (a Joanne Weir recipe that makes the whole house smell wonderful all day long), the fried lemon garlic potatoes that Weir recommends with the lamb, a roasted beet salad with pistachios, the green beans stewed with olives and tomatoes I made last weekend, and kohlrabi, sliced paper thin and dressed with lemon juice and olive oil.  Oh, and a blueberry tart.  🙂

So tonight we went simple. I decided to use up the trenne that I had ordered last summer, after we had it for the first time at Campanile in Los Angeles.  Trenne are like penne pasta, essentially, except that they have three flat sides. They lend themselves perfectly to being boiled in salted water, pasta as usual, and then sautéed so that they get slightly crunchy, kind of the same crunch you get from the crusty bottom of a potsticker. Campanile serves them with a Bolognese sauce, Tallent (here in Bloomington)  has had them on the menu with various sauces. They are hard for a civilian to get her hands on though (I mail order them from here) so I’ve been hoarding my stash, waiting for the right moment.

Tonight, was it. While the pasta was cooking, I caramelized a slivered onion in some good olive oil and then added four medium sized yellow sunburst squash, cut into bite sized chunks. I sautéed them too, until they were soft and starting to brown, then added salt to taste, a few good grinds of pepper, two cloves of garlic, minced up, a tablespoon or two of chopped mint from the garden, and a lemon’s worth of lemon juice. As that cooked, I toasted some pine nuts in the oven until they were fragrant, and chopped up some goat cheese feta.

When the pasta was done, I drained it, and sautéed it quickly in a hot nonstick skillet with a little olive oil. I had to do it in two batches, to get the pasta to develop a light crust. I dumped it into a large shallow serving bowl, added the squash and tossed it together. Sprinkled some cheese, pine nuts and a little more mint over the top.

That was it – easy, easy, easy and delicious.