Spaghetti with cream

Cream is the sauce. 

A mixture of ground spices is prepared from whole seeds to coat the pasta. Olive oil is drizzled to the extent that it is needed to keep the pasta moist and to help the ground seeds adhere. 

The idea is that the spices coating the pasta will eventually combine with the cream but at the table and not at the stove. Cream becomes a flavorful sauce by moving the pasta around the plate. 

* dark mustard seeds, these things are tiny

* fennel seeds, these sound good in everything lately. 

* cumin, a very small amount to compliment but not compete

* hot chile flakes, tiny amount for a little oomph

* gray sea salt

* ground black pepper, not whole seeds because I wanted to go fast and my grinder is fairly coarse. 

* nutmeg scraped over the whole finished plate. 

It is odd not to include Parmigiano Reggiano when it is sitting right there ready to go, but tonight is different. A squirt of lemon is directed onto the pile of pasta which brightens the noodles and does affect the cream eventually turning it into the familiar consistency of sour cream except flavored with lemon and the spices coating the pasta. So the cream becomes flavorful sauce then becomes flavorful sour cream, which is a delightful transformation to observe right there on the plate. 

Parmesan cheese could participate in the splendor of the transformation, and usually does, but not tonight.