Eat This: Wild Boar Plin in Sage Brown Butter Sauce with Roasted Asparagus and Broccoli

Slick with butter doesn't even begin to cover it.

This meal was wonderfully, unctuously, silkily delicious.  Aside from the asparagus, the meal was completely seasonally inapppropriate, but with a June as rainy and cold as this, I couldn't possibly be held responsible for craving winter food during springtime.  This would make a meal for a romantic date in November, or, in true Me Show style, it also works well eaten from laps on the living room floor in front of The Daily Show on a Tuesday night.

Wild Boar Plin in Sage Brown Butter Sauce

O.K., so I didn't make the plin, but the rest is all me.  I bought the pasta from the Pasteria Lucchese stall at the Ballard Farmer's Market and boiled it according to package instructions, which doesn't exactly count as cooking, but, eh, who's keeping track?

Beyond that you need:

5 T unsalted butter

About 10 large leaves of sage

1/4 cup chicken stock

Salt and pepper

And for something as fancy-sounding as Sage Brown Butter Sauce, this sauce is a snap.  Simply melt 5 tablespoons of butter over medium heat and cook until the butter has browned, about 5-6 minutes.  Then toss in 10 large sage leaves, roughly chopped, and about 1/4 cup of chicken stock.  Reduce for about 5 minutes until you get a luxuriously lustrous pool of satiny pleasure.  Season with salt and pepper before tossing your plin it or bathing in it.  Both are perfectly acceptable choices, and I will only judge you positively should you choose either one.

Roasted Asparagus and Broccoli

This is so simple that I'm a little embarrassed that I'm writing a recipe for it.  I'm also embarrassed that 1) I steamed my veggies for 31 years before discovering roasting them and that, 2) it was my notoriously cooking-resistant mother who introduced me to the idea.  Clearly I have issues with this dish, but here it is coming at you anyway.

You'll need:

Asparagus and broccoli (duh)

Olive oil

Salt and Pepper

Lemon (optional)

Asparagus

Break off the woody stems of the asparagus.  Toss in enough olive oil to coat, and then sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Bonus points for you if you squeeze on a little lemon juice and/or dust with a few scrapes of lemon zest.  Toss in a baking dish and roast for 10-12 minutes in a moderate oven (350 - 375).  Eat and weep at all the asparagus you've ruined over the decades in your little, dinky veggie steamer.

Broccoli

Chop your broccoli into pieces slightly smaller than bite-sized to even the cooking time with that of the asparagus, or into bite sized pieces if you're willing to roast for 25 minutes or so.  If you throw away the stem and only roast the florets, don't ever tell me you wasteful spendthrift.  Toss with olive oil, salt, and pepper to coat.  Put into a baking dish.  Roast for 12-15 minutes in a moderate oven (350 - 375).  The broccoli is especially good tossed with the Sage Brown Butter Sauce.

So there you go!  And don't you dare ask me when I'm losing the baby weight.  The baby weight is gone.  It's been immediately replaced with butter weight, and the butter weight gets offended when you assume that it's had anything to do with a baby.