Need to soothe the troubled breast? Need a break from all that turkey? Need a way to settle grumpy children? It won’t make you a cup of tea, nor do your tax return, but pasta otherwise has a pretty good record for fixing the ills of the world.
We had a gale force five grump this afternoon, which even fresh-air-and-scoot did not fix. The point at which the mood turned was when I brought out spaghetti alla carbonara. Admittedly the grumpmeister was given additional shares of bacon, which probably made some of the difference. But still.
Pasta and pesto. Pasta and tuna. Sausage cooked with a thick tomato sauce and mini pasta shells. Lasagna, on occasion. Packet tortellini, for the nights you want to eat in five minutes’ flat. It doesn’t seem to matter how many times you wheel it out, it seems to satisfy every time.
Carbonara is a bit more effort, if you go the egg yolk only route, but the suppleness of the sauce is wonderful. (You could fry up egg and bacon, or you could cook the pasta, cook the bacon, and let the heat of the pasta cook the egg for you. Sorted.) I am not an egg girl, but I make an exception for this.
For all of the different food influences I grew up with, pasta was not a huge star. Â My mum would cook spaghetti, and then proceed to cut hers up with knife and fork.
It took going to Germany to discover that eating spaghetti with a fork and spoon is a good idea: the spoon acts as a base on which to twirl the pasta. (If you want to see it in action, scroll down the link a little to the second picture.)
Lasagna was highly favoured, but then disappeared in five minutes’ flat. This was great for those eating, but occasionally defeating to mum, who had worked over it for an hour or more.
I later went for veggie lasagnas, cooking up a mix of veg, sticking it in the freezer and defrosting it when needed. Then you only had to make the white sauce, and assemble it.
Lasagna was pretty much my favourite food for a long time. After discovering that Garfield liked it too, that pretty much sealed the deal.
We had a longstanding joke with our friends in Italy that the guy was ‘a real woman’ because he could cook lasagna well ie to Italian-pleasing standards. It’s all about a mix of meats in the ragu, I understand.
One of my longstanding favourites is a sausage pasta dish, inspired by the same man cooking something like this. I make it with fairly ordinary sausages, cut into slices. The real trick is understanding that you can cook pasta in tomato sauce.
The genius ingredient is a small pasta called gnocchetti sardi, which cooks fairly quickly, and is particularly comforting. Add some mushrooms too, and ideally a good grating of cheddar on top.
It’s probably less Italianate, but then that’s part of the fun of dishes you cook a lot – they start as one thing, and become your own in the making and remaking.
I still aspire to making my own pasta. My dad did an Italian cooking course one time, and made his own pasta – along with a purchased broom handle from which to hang the strands to dry. I understand a clothes horse works fairly well too, and will look for an opportunity to both make the pasta, and photograph it in situ.
Mainly, I like the infinite flexibility of simple ingredients – eggs, flour – to become something so varied, and so loved. I’m a theme and variations girl. And pasta provides a great leitmotif.