small culinary disaster

So my usual way of making sauce for ravioli is to dry-roast a handful of pine nuts, then cut the roasting by first, plunging the bottom of the small pan into a bowl of cold water, then adding olive oil to the pan. Finally, a touch of dried herbs shaken in makes it a sauce.

This time, though, the packaged ravioli (ricotta and lemon zest, new to me, from Trader Joe's - really good, we'll have it again) suggested a butter sauce. So I melted butter in instead of using olive oil.

Then it came time for the herbs. It wasn't a major grocery brand shaker. It was a blend I'd bought from the franchised outlet of this little vendor at Ashland last fall. I'd been using them with no trouble, but this time ... I shook and the cap top came off and the entire bottle's worth poured into the pan. Worse, the herbs immediately sucked up all the melted butter.

I could have discarded the whole thing and started over, but that would have taken over 5 minutes, not a good idea with the ravioli ready to serve and the expense of throwing out good pine nuts. Instead, I dug out as much herb and as few pine nuts as I could, added more butter and melted that. It was still way more herb than I'd intended, but at least it was edible, and the ravioli were delicious.

But from now on, I'll need to be more careful with what I'd already noticed from this vendor were amateur-level cap tops.