Live-blogging this whole Cabbucini thing...

Of course we never really live-blog anything. At least not in real time. But I cooked a bowl of cabbucini with a simple red sauce last night and it was just lovely. Note to the adventurous: you have to let cabbucini drain a bit longer than fettucini--and even then it does hold a fair amount of water.

I had it with a glass or three of Rene Junot Dry Red Table Wine. Ghastly stuff, really, but its the best red wine you can buy at that particular price point.

What price point is that?
$9.99
There are lots of ten dollar wines that are fun. Why do you say Rene Junot?
Because it's $9.99 for a 1.5 liter bottle!
Yikes!
Exactly! It's just barely more expensive than bottled water.
It must taste horrid.
Horrid is a harsh word. I would go with nasty and vinegary.
Oh. Well, I guess for 5 bucks a bottle, in the absence of Two Buck Chuck, which I can only assume is a mythical product, nasty and vinegary doesn't sound that bad.

Anyway, the point isn't about cheap red wine. The point is about how a nice Irish boy from New York could take a quarter-head of cabbage and upend everything we think we know about two millennia-plus of Italian cooking. The audacity of that, my friend, is worth rolling around on your tongue. The almost psychedelic clarity of the thing takes the breath away.

It's like dropping acid.
Yes it is. Except you get to eat as much cabbucini as you want, and watch the Mets.
Yeah... and there's the whole red wine thing too.
Yes there is.
Yes there is.
A final note on the red wine thing, if I might?
Sure, go ahead.
Well, the last time I had lunch at Per Se, the red wine that was recommended to us--ironically an Italian one--cost about $300. And frankly, it was a disappointment.
A disappointment at $300? That's a blow.
Yes it is. And it makes nasty and vinegary at five bucks a pop seem pretty civilized, doesn't it.
Yes it does.