On a cool and rainy Monday afternoon, it’d be easy to grumble a bit and wish the vestiges of winter would just leave for good already, but memories of our perfect weekend weather keep my emotions in check. The sun and warmth had such a curative effect on my doldrums that I BAKED, people — and if that isn’t a testament to spring’s power, then I don’t know what is.

So welcome, Spring, and please don’t rush off so quickly. Perhaps I could tempt you to hang around with a nice lemon tart or two…

Pucker up!

recipe after the jump

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You guys know I usually like to wing it in the kitchen, right? It’s certainly not a surprise to poor Gil, who has to deal with my creations. (Btw — sorry for that particularly meh quinoa salad I made for dinner recently, honey!) But sometimes I do the thing up proper-like and follow real recipes from people who know what they’re doing — people like Mario Batali, Patricia Wells and Giuliano Bugialli.

Above, you see the first of two pasta dishes we’ve had in the last couple of weeks. Ground veal and ground pork sang a song of ragu from the freezer, and at their insistence, I did a web search for a real recipe to follow. The first link I clicked featured a video of Mario Batali making a traditional Ragu Bolognese. I’m so happy I followed the video’s instructions instead of the written recipe below; I never, ever, would have thought to cook each stage of the recipe for as long as instructed. But the prolonged cooking added a depth of flavor I’ve never achieved in my years of sauce-making. I might use slightly less wine next time because that flavor was especially strong (and not my favorite thing in the world, to be honest), but diffused with ample amounts of pasta, it was phenomenal.

A few weeks ago, Gil and I got to spend three whole nights in the city during a pharmaceutical conference he attended for his magazine. I took full advantage of my time there and met up with friends on three consecutive nights for dinner and drinks. The first night I didn’t venture out of my work neighborhood, meeting my friend Scott at Bar Stuzzichini. I went mainly for the small plates (the arancini were disappointing this time, but I plan to recreate the zucchini alla scapece just as soon as my grill comes out for the season — possibly this very weekend), but the pasta dish we shared was the real revelation: macherroni alla chitarra, or pasta with pistachio and lemon cream sauce.

Once we made it home, I started researching recipes in my Italian cookbooks and decided to use a simple lemon-cream sauce adapted from Patricia Wells’ Trattoria and Giuliano Bugialli’s Bugialli On Pasta. I toasted shelled pistachios, cooled and chopped them, the steeped the smaller bits (pistachio dust, really) in lemon juice and cream while I made the pasta with my brand new Kitchenaid Pasta Rollers. (I happened to find them fairly heavily discounted on Amazon, but they’re worth paying an everyday price for.) After cooking the pasta, I tossed it with the cream sauce and grated Parmesan over a low flame until the sauce had thickened. Just before serving, I added more Parmesan, chopped parsley and more chopped pistachios. It was a great success, but not quite as pistachio-infused as the original. I have more experimenting to do before I give you a real recipe, but I’m pretty happy with the results of my first go-round. It’s hard to go wrong when you listen to the experts.

For the past couple of months, my inner Mennonite (Esther Stoltzfus-Yoder) has been very patiently encouraging me to make my own butter. As I’m someone who can happily survive mostly on olive oil, this craving has been a little surprising, but I gave in because hey — fresh butter! How cool is that? Finding heavy cream without additives was challenging until I decided just to buy it in the city (Ronnybrook at Whole Foods), but the bigger decision was what to serve with this lovely butter. Esther would’ve been especially pleased if I’d made bread, but I was willing to risk a shunning to go with the easier option — croissants from Madeleine Patisserie.

Making your own butter is a perfectly simple thing to do, as it turns out. Make sure your cream has no additives and is around 60 degrees. Pour it into the bowl of a stand mixer, add the whisk attachment, and — this is very, very important — cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap. Set the mixer to medium-high (I used setting 6 on our Kitchenaid), and whisk away for about 8 minutes, or until buttermilk is splashing against the plastic wrap and you can hear the butter thunking around in the bowl. Thunking — pretty good word, isn’t it?

At this point, you need to rinse the milk from the butter so it doesn’t turn rancid in the fridge. To do this, just set up a fine-mesh strainer over a bowl to collect the buttermilk (which is beyond delicious — if I don’t drink it all, it has banana bread written all over it), dump the whole mess in, then wash the butter under cold running water, kneading it with a fork until the water runs clear. I pressed the butter with paper towels to remove the excess water, then set aside half in a ramekin for use this week and rolled the other half in plastic wrap to freeze for later. I lightly salted the butter we were using right away and could hardly wait to dig in. It really lived up to my expectations — this was the sweetest, creamiest butter we’ve ever had outside of a restaurant, but it doesn’t have a lot of character beyond that. Next time, I think I’ll culture the cream for 24 hours to give it a little oomph. Esther might just make me a quilt for that one.