Fromage a Quatre?

For dinner, I had beef and spinach ravioli with some leftover puttanesca sauce and bread with olive oil. And an intriguing dessert.

The ravioli was organic frozen ravioli from Whole Foods. Not too bad, especially since it was cooked correctly for once. I like my pasta on the chewy side of al dente, and Jon likes his on the smushy side of al dente, so pasta is a often a point of contention. It was beefy without being greasy; my only complaint was the relative paucity of filling, and the fact I couldn't taste the spinach much at all.

The puttanesca was left over from last week's orecchiete. It's Target's Archer Farms brand, which is generally good, and it's made in Italy, so I assumed it was a safe bet. But no. The sauce is atrocious. The first time we opened it, there was a good 1/2" of olive oil suspended on top of the sauce. Puttanesca (translation: whore sauce)does contain many oily, salty ingredients- olives, olive oil, anchovies- but that's no excuse. It contained enough salt to kill a large mammal, and it lacked the spiciness of a good puttanesca. It's incredibly easy to make at home, so next time I'll just do that.

For dessert, I had some cheese and wine. Neither is what you would expect.
The cheese was a leftover Valentine's Day splurge, something so weird I couldn't pass it up- chocolate, pecan, bourbon, and raisin flavored goat cheese. Called Fromage a Trois (the name is even more absurd when you count the flavors- but then, I am a humorless literalist), the cheese left me a little confused. It tastes good, it just doesn't taste anything like cheese. It tastes like very nice velvety-dark chocolate mousse, with mostly ineffectual chunks of pecan and raisin. I hate raisins, but I wouldn't have known what the mushy black things in my cheese were without checking the ingredient list. The bourbon flavor is basically non-existent. It's an interesting gimmick, but not one I expect to crave (particularly since I thought it was a splurge at $11, and then found this price list)

I had a glass of fino sherry with the cheese. A pretty sad pairing, considering the sweet "cheese", but it was still good. Fino sherry is the lightest and driest type of sherry- the drier the better in my book- and tastes like crisp apples, vanilla, and oak. It's great on a hot day after a huge meal, especially paella.