Damn, that's good.

What's so good? Fresh pasta with homemade Italian sausage and dandelion greens, with "aged" ricotta (whatever that is).

My version wasn't quite as good as the version I had at a restaurant which shall remain nameless (nameless because it was the most ridiculously awful service I have ever had the misfortune to experience and don't even feel like uttering their name) but whose version served as inspiration. That lunch was divine.

Since I knew I probably wouldn't go back (because of the really appallingly bad service), and since dandelions have been popping up left, right and centre, I felt it was my duty to learn to replicate that dish my own self.

So today, though I had a thousand and one things to do (and no excuse to cook since I have a fridge full of odds and ends), I impulsively hopped off the subway at Pape, dreaming of Masellis. I wasn't sure what I needed to get, but I was sure I'd find something.

Find something I did. A gorgeous bunch of dandelion greens (dandelion purples is more like it). So I hightailed it over to the butcher, grabbed their (to my memory) so-so "medium" Italian sausages (whatever that means) (they do have fennel seeds, so I'm not complaining) and some Crotonese, and sped home. (Incidentally, the sausages were better than I remembered.)

Short pasta with dandelion greens and a hint of garlic and Italian sausage and cheese. (I used the aforementioned Crotonese with some most excellent Romano imported from Windsor, not the nameless restaurant's "aged ricotta." Whatever that means.)

Damn.