Vocab Lesson: Plin

Even though I spend more of my time in tofu shops and taquerias than in bistros, being in and on the fringes of the restaurant business for a couple decades means that I've absorbed a lot of jargon. It's standard practice to spend the first five minutes of every meal out with friends helping them translate unfamiliar terminology: gnudi, sous-vide, gastrique, saba, scapes.

I was a little caught by surprise last week when I was doing some menu perusing online and came across two occurrences of a term I hadn't encountered yet -- plin -- though I'm sure it's old hat to you. Tilth's May menu and the Palace Kitchen's current menu both include this dish, which the Kitchen defined as "a Piedmontese ravioli." I decided to go see what a plin was.

This is a very bad photo of a large plate of Palace Kitchen's plin. (Note to prospective cell phone owners: If you ever want to take surreptitious photos that you can actually show to other people, don't buy a Blackberry.) "Plin" is an American bastardization of "agnolotti dal plin," agnolotti being a recognizable variety of stuffed pasta and plin meaning "pinch." Here's a thorough, photo-filled set of instructions on how to make them. Our Molto Mario also has a recipe.

Re Tom Douglas's plin: Porky and threaded through with a chiffonade of greens, the ravioli-with-a-fancy-name were tossed with butter, chard leaves, and parmesan, and almost reminded me of Chinese boiled dumplings. Very tasty. Actually, I was tempted to write the more professional-sounding "yumm-o," but then my fingertips broke out in hives and I had to stop typing.