Pasta et Al

If you want to light a fire in the pasta world, just ask someone what these little guys are called. Even the ravioli versus tortelli debate is easier to settle than this one. Manti, fagottini, ravioli, cofanetti, lanterne. Whatever you want to call them, they look great, taste fantastic, and are one of the easiest filled pastas to make.

One day, when I’m living in a whimsically decrepit villa in southern Italy, backing on to woodlands and looking down towards the ocean, I’ll grab my whittled walking stick and amble out the backdoor to collect mushrooms. There are honestly fewer things that I want more in life. But right now I’m 16,000 kilometres away and have little idea how to pick mushrooms that won’t kill me.

When we first decided to turn our little pasta tradition into a blog, posting a different pasta each week or so, I thought it would be a good idea to list out every type of pasta I could think of and make sure that we had enough weeks in us. As I approached 100 I decided we’d be fine. Then when, with a little additional research, I discovered that there are actually an estimated 350 varieties out there,, I had a little panic.

The worst kept secret of the pasta world is that for all of the incredible, complex, layered sauces out there, there is no pasta that can’t be enjoyed with just a chunk of butter and a crack of pepper. Whenever we got home especially late after school, and everyone was exhausted, it was hard to hide our delight at the suggestion of plain old pasta with butter.

This week little Al and I have invented a very special pasta for our very favourite person. We’d be lost without this lovely thing. She’s the backbone of the house, knows us better than we know ourselves, and has effortlessly become the greatest Mamma of all time. When we talk about sitting down to pasta with the family, she is the family.

The best things in life are often simple. It’s with great pleasure that we spend a whole afternoon making pasta, but with even greater pleasure that we remember the sugo to go with it will only take half an hour to make. This is our super quick and tasty tomato and basil sauce.

Little Al has managed to inherit a few of my more ‘difficult’ personality traits, but so far there’s been no sign of the calculated, scheming mischief that defined my own childhood. The prime stone against which I honed my blade of torment was my nonna. She did have pleasant diminutive nicknames for me, but my given names may as well have been ‘delinguente’ and ‘scustamato’ for their frequency and familiarity.

Slow cooked meat. Oh yeah. A surefire way to a satisfying meal is simple ingredients, cooked for a long time. And meat. I remember a couple of decades back, the last giant family party that I think we had. The kind that has so many ‘uncles’ and ‘cousins’ that you’re reminded of the fact that they’re actually placeholder titles used to avoid convoluted explanations of exactly who’s brother’s great-uncle-in-law you’re talking to, and that actually you can’t remember.

Handmade paccheri! Opinions are famously and aggressively varied as to what authentic Italian food is, and how it should be cooked. Pasta is no exception. Little Al and I value time-honoured recipes and pairings (it’s the basis of everything that we make), but we don’t believe that the love and joy of food should ever be stifled by tradition.

Here’s one that comes from the heart. This is our signature family sugo: meatballs in tomato sauce. It’s the sauce that bubbled away quietly in the background every Sunday, filling the house with delicious anticipation; it’s the sauce that simply holds everything together. In fact, when I talk about pasta and what it means to me, this is the sugo that I think of.