This week's menu in Belval, 21 to 26 September: autumn's first pumpkin

On Wednesday at 2:05 in the morning, autumn begins. Nobody will be there to see it.

At 6:30 we open, as we do every day, and that morning’s coffee will be the first of the season. That is the whole of what changes. The machine will know nothing about it.

Monday 21 to Saturday 26 September

Tagliatelle con Scampi · 22,80 €
Scampi on a courgette cream. (1.3.12.14)

Maccheroni alla Crema di Melanzane · 20,80 €
Aubergine cream, yellow cherry tomatoes and pecorino. (1.3.6.7.10)

Risotto con Zucca e Salsiccia · 21,80 €
Pumpkin and halal veal sausage. (7)

Eliche Farcite al Capocollo · 23,90 €
Filled with capocollo, potato cream and confit cherry tomatoes. (1.3.7)

Puccia al Polipo · 23,80 €
Grilled octopus tentacles, spinach, stracciatella and cherry tomatoes. (1.7.14)

Tagliata di Pollo · 24,90 €
Halal chicken fillet, sun-dried tomatoes, spinach salad and homemade yoghurt sauce. (7)

The big one and the little one

Read this week’s card in order.

The tagliatelle arrive on a courgette cream. Three lines down, the risotto is made with pumpkin. In Italian a courgette is a zucchina and a pumpkin is a zucca. The first word is simply the small version of the second: the little squash and the big one.

Same family, same starting flavour, two seasons. The little one is a summer thing and fits in one hand. The big one turns up now, takes months, and keeps in a cellar all winter.

This week they are on the same card, a few centimetres apart, in precisely the week summer hands over. None of that was planned.

Propellers

Eliche, in Italian, means propellers. The kind on a boat, the kind on a plane.

It is pasta twisted into a spiral, built to hold sauce in its turns. This week’s are filled with capocollo, a cured pork neck made all over central and southern Italy, set on a potato cream with confit cherry tomatoes.

Some pasta names come from the kitchen. This one comes from the workshop.

A sausage that is not the one in the book

Pumpkin and sausage risotto is a northern dish. In Mantua they take pumpkin so seriously that they have been stuffing it into tortelli for centuries. In rice it is the same idea, with less work: the sweetness of the squash, the fat of the sausage, and nothing to do but stir.

In the book, the sausage is pork. Here it is veal, and halal.

It is the same dish. It is simply made for the street it is served on.

Coming in

Eat in or takeaway, Monday to Friday from 6:30. On Saturday we are here from 9:00 to 14:00, with the same six dishes until we close.

The numbers refer to allergens, the full list is on mycaffe.lu.

MyCaffé, 6 Rue de la Fonte, Belval.

Buon autunno.