cherry nothing (CNOT)

Sparrow Grass Penne

asparagus, chilli, gomaiso, olive_oil, pasta, pine_nuts, sesame, tamari, white_onion

ingredients

Servings: It's pasta. If more people turn up, make more pasta. It just means people get less sauce.

• Penne Rigato (by preference make it good durum stuff, the kind that looks white-yellow rather than brown)
• Asparagus (one bunch)
• Tamari
• fresh red chilli to taste, not much
• medium white onion
• pine nuts
• Gomaiso (if you can't find this see below)
• Good quality, acidic, lemony, fragrant olive oil.

Gomaiso. 'Go-My-Sew'. What do you mean you don't have any gomaiso? Ridiculous! Well then do you have

• An oversized bag of sesame seeds
• Sea salt

Mix 4 parts sesame seed with one part sea salt, and then pound it to bits in a granite pestle and mortar until the salt is almost invisible to the naked eye. Now you have

• Gomaiso
• weary arms

soundtrack
Anything incomprehensible, noisy and Japanese for making the Gomaiso (Afrirampo would be a good choice, for example). Anything by Thievery Corporation for the rest.

process
Add the halved, tailed asparagus spears briefly to a pot of boiling water, taking them out sooner rather than later. Make the pasta using the asparagus water as you leave the asparagus to dry off. Gently fry the onion and chilli up with a little olive oil, adding pine nuts a little bit later. Splash a half tablespoon of tamari in and add the asparagus to finish cooking in this new environment without getting greasy inside. Toss the (now cooked) pasta with plenty of olive oil, stir in the asparagus mixture and top with plenty of gomaiso. Discard weary arms.

I feel obliged to point out that owing to an accident of genetics I, like many others, simply cannot smell 'asparagus wee', the effect of which Marcel Proust described as transforming his chamber pot into a 'bouquet of flowers'. Be aware that people who do have this superpower will probably be able to tell whether you have just 'been'. Also do not eat this before attempting to escape from supervillans with cost-effective access to sniffer dogs.

Consume with any of: pickled ginger, nori flakes, miso soup, garlic naan bread, mixed olives, goat's cheese, lime and sweet potato won-tons, scottish red ale.

There is still no decision about which microformat to use for recipies, otherwise this entry would be using them.