Penne Gorgonzola and my favourite now 11 year old

My nephew is amazing.

I’m sure that every aunt feels that way, but I promise you, mine is the best.

He is shockingly smart. He is wickedly funny. He is unendingly kind.

And today is his 11th birthday.

So in his honour I wanted to flash back to a weekend this summer.

My amazing parents take both my niece and nephew for a couple of weeks every summer, which is a tradition that started with my grandparents when we were kids.

They came up on Father’s day, so I headed out to see them in Niagara and celebrate my Dad.

While we were at dinner it came up that the next weekend was my nieces dance recital back in Pittsburg, and my parents planned to drive her back so that she could attend. While this is a lovely idea, and definitely the grandparent win, my poor nephew looked like someone had just said Minecraft was now illegal.

He’s a great big brother, and a generous soul, but the idea of getting back into a car, driving 5 hours to see his sister dance, and then driving back the next day seemed like a nightmare. Before anything could be discussed he provided the solution - he’d come and stay with me!

When they lived here in Toronto he and I would have sleep overs nearly once a month, so often that he had his own areas in my small condo. The day he realized that he’d grown too tall to sleep on my purple chaise was rough.

The spiffy dude himself - I promise that it was the adult’s idea to teach him how to wear a spoon on his nose at the very nice restaurant!

So it was decided, he’d come with my to work on Friday (a perk of the kids TV world - bringing kids with you is absolutely okay!), then we’d have Saturday and Sunday in the city. There was a small hiccup - I realized I had a reservation for at Momofuku Kojin with my friends on Saturday night. This did give him pause. It was a problem - he didn’t have a nice shirt packed. So like the problem solver he is he told his Grandmother that they would have to go shopping.

So Friday arrived, we said our farewells to Grandma, Poppa, and his sister and headed to the city.

Saturday we packed in a beach walk with tiny dog, go karting, and pool time. So needless to say that despite a hearty breakfast by lunch time he was ravenous. I offered him whatever he wanted, should we go out for pizza, make burgers, grab sushi?

Nope. My tiny little gourmand, who’s go to order for 2019 has been swordfish, asked if I’d make Penne Gorgonzola.

I’m a sucker, who literally can’t say no to him, so penne gorgonzola it was.

This is maybe the worlds easiest pasta dish, and always feels totally indulgent.

I started by salting some water and bringing it up to a boil. Once it was there I dropped in the noodles and stared on my gorgonzola sauce. This is so simple I feel like I’m cheating by calling it a sauce… I pour about half a cup of heavy cream into a sauté pan. Heat it to a simmer, then drop in pieces of gorgonzola a few at a time until it was combined. My audience today likes an intense gorgonzola flavour so we went for just over a half cup of the cheese.

Once it was combined the cream had thickened to the point where it would coat the back of a spoon.

You want to make it a little thicker than you want the final sauce to be, as the little bit of pasta water than comes in with the noodles will loosen it up.

The pasta was ready so I strained it quick and dropped it in, a quick stir to combine and that’s it. Heap it into a bowl and feed the growing boy!

Since I lack the metabolism of a 10 year old boy, and knew we had Kojin on the horizon, I made myself a salad full of fresh summer veggies!

Good, but not quite as indulgent as creamy, cheesy pasta!

Then, stuffed full of pasta the decision was made to snuggle up with Fitz and watch a movie for a little while.

I will admit the boy has me wrapped around his little finger, but look at this. Can you honestly tell me you could resist.