Welcome to Pasta et Al! We’re three Als, a dad and his tiny helpers, and this is our food blog. It’s the recipes, the secrets, and the techniques passed on to us, and it’s our weekly Sunday tradition. In fact, it’s our story, a good old delicious tale told with our hands: pasta.
Despite his world-wearied countenance, Little Al is relatively new to pasta-making. Littlest Al is even newer. Their stories are only just beginning. I, on the other hand, have been making floury messes in the kitchen for a while now. I have so many early memories of pasta that it’s hard to know where to begin: heading down the road in my pram to collect fresh eggs and cheese, being trusted to sprinkle the flour then eventually feed the sheets then turn the handle (a rigorous accreditation process administered by my nonna), gathering around on milk crates in the garage to make endless litres of passata. And once a week I’d take my place at the long table with the white tablecloth, surrounded by four generations of family, and we’d all sit down to a big meal of pasta, made and shared with love.
Three decades on, though so much has changed, I still make pasta every Sunday. It might seem like a habit, or a well-worn routine, but there’s more to it than that. The truth is that for me the act of making and sharing pasta contains the memories of a young family making a start in a new country, and the history that they brought with them. It carries the earliest memories that I have of my grandparents, uncles, aunties, cousins; people who are no longer nearby for an after school dinner, those who have passed, and those who sometimes remember when they first handed me a ball of dough but have forgotten my name.
So every now and then there’s a sadness to carrying on this little bit of history, but it’s there for the greater enduring story of happiness that has managed to somehow attach itself to such a simple act of flour and water. And I pass it now to my sons with only endless love and hope. I know that their memories will be very different to mine, and I doubt that they’ll remember being propped up on the table against the pasta machine at only a few weeks of age, but they’ll always know that the work their hands do is the same work that accompanied so many of us who came before them.
We’d like to invite you to join us in our kitchen and at our table as we make our weekly pasta, because although we have our own little story (that we’ll keep writing), we believe that at its simplest pasta is about sharing. You’ll find here the recipes, techniques, ingredients, and equipment behind our Sunday pasta adventures; from dough to dish, with stories and tricks and tiny hands covered in flour.
Make it with love, for yourself or for the whole street. You never know, you might end up with your own pasta story.
Al & Al & Al.
Pasta et Al, Canberra, Australia.
