Basta Pasta

If all else fails and one is sunk in a deep gloom, eat a good pasta! Even a not so good pasta. It never fails to lift the spirit especially if accompanied by a bit of a 2014 vintage Shiraz so fresh off the vine and so rough it even cleans the cutlery as well as the palate. We had an Aldi special at $ 5.99. A cheeky but ambitious little number full of cigar-box ambience and middle utterly retrievable but lingering autumnal wind, reminiscent of a Vivaldi under a plane tree at Italy’s Bressanone or Brixon (during the forgotten war with Austria when we were there). Phew…

A few evenings ago there was a surplus of fresh pasta. It’s sauce retrieved from the deep freezer department of our fridge. It must have been created by Helvi who excels in pasta sauce like no one else that I know or even don’t know. After thawing I cooked and boiled the pasta. It was a 5 minute pasta or 4 minutes if you like el dente. I did a six minute job in consideration of the state of my recently obtained new dente.

The pasta was heavenly, almost a honeymoon of spoon and fork. But a full packet of pasta meant there was a lot to be saved for future gourmet pleasures. I am always happy for two o’clock pm to arrive. I can then start mulling over the coming meal. Not so much mulling as imagining the food to be sampled. H and I do try and make the evening meal a ‘special’. I don’t want to imply we eat lobster or imbibe a $ 1200.-Grange. No, it is more of a desire to make things from the ingredients of a sow’s ear, if you get my gist or even a drift. It is a form of art I have been polishing for some time. I love the stove and it loves me. It is a totally symbiotic relationship.

Last night I baked the previous surplus pasta. I dunked half a litre of milk in which I had stirred in two eggs, pepper some salt and (brazenly) a chopped up home grown and very hot chili, over the lot. I was copious with the cheese which I grated over the lot.I baked it for about twenty minutes on 200c.

Helvi had two helpings and I noticed rapid chewing. Nothing is as rewarding as spousal chewing on a dish cooked with love. The photo above shows the dish before eating. My boot and leg is there for a reason. The lid of the oven has developed a will of its own and tends to want to close. I have to have words with my stove. I think it must be spring-loaded and I wanted to take a photo to immortalise the event. The lid seems to have different ideas.

Giving a leg-up to pasta

So, I’ll stop now and say the obvious…Enjoy!

Tags: Bressanone, Grange, Italy, Pasta, Penfolds Grange