This was an adventure, to say the least. I could’ve sworn I’ve eaten this very item before, and perhaps had seen a recipe - no, many recipes, in fact - for this on the Internet. So imagine my surprise that no Google search in the world was turning up results for this! This was all super lame because I had already purchased the key ingredients that I was certain I had read in this recipe that I apparently dreamed about in one of my disturbingly frequent dreams in which I am just reading the Internet, or a cookbook: Gorgonzola, dried cranberries, walnuts, and basil.

Before you ask me why I didn’t just make a simple salad with these ingredients, or a tart, I would like to inform you that I hate salad and I have no time for tarts. NO TIME. Fuck Google for constantly suggesting that I do this while on my quest for the pasta recipe.

Ultimately, I found myself looking sadly at these ingredients, none of which I have a single use for on their own, and realizing I had to just Make. It. Work. Research brought me to a fusilli with walnuts recipe on Epicurious, and a Jamie Oliver recipe that involved Gorgonzola, neither of which were really satisfactory so I’m not even going to bother linking to them, because why should I waste your time? Here is the recipe I invented myself (with vague guidance from the other recipes) that was completely satisfactory.

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 of a yellow onion, finely chopped
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1/2 tsp dried thyme
• 2 tbsp dry vermouth (do not measure this, just throw in a few good glugs)
• 1/2 lb crumbled Gorgonzola (you can use less but just nut up and use all a whole lot)
• White wine as needed (I used Pinot Grigio last night)
• 3/4 cup walnuts, toasted and very coarsely ground
• Salt & pepper, to taste
• At least a couple handfuls of dried cranberries
• 1 cup chopped fresh basil
• Curly pasta of some sort (rotini, fusilli, etc.)

First things first, you do not have to buy the walnuts pre-toasted or ground. It’ll save you money to do this yourself, so just throw some walnuts into a little pan on the stove on medium-low heat and shake it around every once and a while until they get toasted. Then toss ‘em in your food processor and pulse a couple times. Voila! Just put them aside and don’t worry about them for now.

In a medium-sized pot, heat your olive oil up on medium ‘til it’s kinda shimmering, and add the chopped onions. Let them sweat until they turn translucent and soft and then add the garlic and thyme. Let that go until it’s just slightly - very slightly! - golden and add your vermouth. Let reduce for a few minutes and then turn to low heat.

Now, this is where I fucked up and tried to add milk. I have no idea why this happened, but the milk turned into a completely solid substance straight in the middle of the pot. It didn’t curdle the way I have seen before, when you don’t temper first or if there’s too much acidity in the sauce, where it turns into little white flakes everywhere. It looked like I had thrown a giant mass of salt water taffy into the pot. This was easily removed (no harm done at all, other than the waste of expensive milk) but if someone can tell me why this happened I would be grateful! So that is why there is no milk in this recipe! Tricky!

Anyway, after that little experience, I decided to just pile the cheese on in there and start melting it, into the reduced vermouth-onion-garlic-olive-oil mixture. Just keep stirring it. If it is too dry, take your glass of white wine, which you should already be drinking because who the hell cooks without drinking the whole time, and start pouring some in. You will not need the whole glass, so assume about a half a glass of wine. You want it to be a sort of thin consistency because the next step will thicken it considerably.

Here is where the walnuts come back! Just pour those all in there and stir it up. As you will see, the sauce will thicken up now. Turn off the heat and stir in your cranberries now. You need more than you think you need. It will seem crazy. Ideally, you want it so that every forkful will have one cranberry on it. This is about a 1 cranberry per like 5 noodles ratio. Mix in your basil at this point too, then your cooked pasta. Season with salt & pepper (if you used the recommended amount of cheese, you will need very little to no additional salt).

Take a good look and decide if you have the proper amount of cranberries. Be realistic. If you want to be super crazy, you could grate some Pecorino on top but that was a little too much for me to even contemplate last night.

This is totally delicious! But it also will make you weigh 100lbs more afterwards.