So Easy to Love
When I was a kid in the Bronx they called it macaroni. After Church on Sunday my sister and I would go to the deli on the corner to get macaroni salad for lunch. Little elbow shapes swimming in mayonnaise with maybe a bit of pickle relish. It seems deplorable now, but we loved that stuff in 1965! The container never lasted long in the back of the fridge.
'Maudy, you always loved starch' mom would say. She described one time when she was feeding me pastina with butter in the high chair, while on the phone. She held the spoon in her hand and walked away to hang up the receiver. I leaned so far out of that chair to get to the spoon I almost toppled out. Not much has changed. I've given up many things in my life....alcohol for sure, meat from time to time, chocolate, coffee, sugar once in awhile.
I always feel so much better when I quit these things, almost holy, but the starch I cannot stop. Give me bread, polenta, tabouli, kasha, couscous, even millet. But pasta...nothing comes close to the beauty of a bowl of that stuff. Plus it's really cheap! I would never eat it in a restaurant...a pasta meal can be $25.00 and that same exact dish would cost you about 75 cents to make at home, sauce and all!
It's a big pasta world now with all kinds of shapes and colors. The wit of fusilli, all curly and long, the elegance of farfalle, with its scalloped edges and the middle pinched together so it stays just a little crunchy when cooked. What about orecchiette, the little ears that nestle into each other, inseparable in the bowl? I have a new favorite, bucatini, like a thin hose that catches sauce perfectly. Of course there's angel hair, so quick to cook, and excellent if you have to have your fix right away, but those thin strands are just to delicate to be taken seriously in my book.
There are some absurd shapes I don't bother with like pumpkins around Halloween, and bunnies at Easter time. I feel like these shapes are a mockery, and they fall apart in the boiling water proving to me their creators are charlatans. Most people feel that the differentiating factor in a dish of pasta is the sauce, but I believe each shape has a different flavor...certainly a different experience in your mouth.
Here is a good flavorful sauce for your next pasta meal. It will change your life, at least for an hour or two. It's very simple and goes well on rice noodles, soba, spaghetti, anything.
Miso Sauce for Pasta
1 tablespoon light miso paste
2 tablespoons Seasoned rice wine vinegar
3 tablespoons water
Juice of one orange
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon smooth almond butter
Put these ingredients in a bowl and whisk. This makes a small amount of sauce, perfect for one bowl. It's a party in pasta paradise.