Avocado Pasta

An elegant, Cali-inspired dish

We’ve been in Ojai, California for the last ten days. This is what I’ve been listening to. I’ve been drawing cairns, reading, and drinking Madre Desert Water, the only good ready-to-drink canned cocktail I’ve tried, which I’m trying to track down for my restaurants. There are a lot of good cars around.

I considered calling this dish “Pink Moment Pasta,” in a cornball homage to Ojai’s inky pink-hued sunsets, and a nod to the California Pepper Tree, invasive and abundant in the area, whose rose-hued peppercorns are ground atop as a finishing touch.

In the end, I like the straight-forwardness of just calling it what it is: Avocado Pasta.

The idea of an avocado pasta might strike you as odd, as it did me when I first tried the Avocado Spaghetti at Tomi Jazz, a Japanese jazz club in midtown Manhattan. Their version, built on a creamy, blended sauce with avocado as the base, is only spiritually linked with mine, a more elemental approach that celebrates restraint.