Happy Monday everyone! This is an exciting week for several reasons:

1) Today marks my 7-year anniversary of moving to NYC. (Click here for the full story...)

2) This is finally the week – FOR REAL – you amazingly patient recipe-testers will get your recipes. Sorry it's taken such an extraordinarily long time. I had no idea how long my own recipe-testing and editing would take. Excited to see all the fun Yellow Table dinner parties that will come out of this project. :)

3) This is the LAST week (Day 96-100) of The Cookbook Diaries. I'm kind of in denial that's it's already coming to an end, but really excited for the next phase...stay tuned!

4) This is the week that Saveur starts sifting through blog nominations and decides on the finalists. Thank you to everyone who nominated The Yellow Table!! Results will be up March 31st...if I get nominated as one of the finalists, you can vote again! I'll keep you posted.

bowl-pasta

So last Friday, we had another big shoot for the cookbook – 10 more recipes – and it was so fun having so many new surfaces to work on. (Thank you PID Floors!) Also, Thursday night I painted a few more boards to use as backdrops. Up 'til now, we've been working exclusively with a black and a teal backdrop, but now we have royal blue and an Easter-egg pink – both which are so much fun to play with! We have 25 more recipes to shoot in the coming weeks, so stay tuned for some fun color combos...

This recipe is inspired by Andrew Carmellini's lamb ragu that he serves at Locanda Verde, one of my favorite Italian restaurants in the city. Not only is it cheaper to make this at home, I think you'll find it tastes every bit as good. I shared it on the blog over a year ago, but it was at the end of a post about a New Year's Eve party so you might have missed it. I figured this dish needed a post of it's own, before spring fully arrives. It's still in the 20's in NYC, so if you're not making a St. Paddy's Day stew tonight, this could be a nice alternative. Cheers!

(Photos by Signe Birck; bowl from ABC Home.)

[recipe:best-lamb-ragu-pappardelle-recipe]