Almost 2 decades ago, an Italian missionary friend of mine cooked for me a what she called "classic Italian comfort food" that's as easy as ABC to prepare and yet delightfully delicious and tasted expensive. I mean, to this day, remembering her kindness, cooking for a sick friend that I was, that really meant so much.
My kids could tell if your pasta is good or the otherwise.
Down memory lane, here's what she did:
1. took a left-over pasta spaghetti from the fridge
2. melted butter in a pan with a little drizzle of olive oil and stirred in the left-over pasta noodles
3. got a medium-sized red tomato...pomodoro ehh...poked it with her finger on its base and sort of squeezed it with her bare hand so that the juice really oozed out as she threw it in the pasta while stirring
5. cracked the egg directly in the pasta, stirring it well, turned off the heat
6. plated for me...the poor hand-beaten pomodoro seated nicely on the center of the plate above the hill of my pasta grandiose, peppered...
The lesson I learned that day was invaluable; there's nothing like being cooked for by a dear friend especially when you're sick, it's like taking a paracetamol without the bitter taste; as a Filipino, trying to cook Italian, I sometimes over complicate things, and oftentimes it stemmed from my own insecurity and the feeling of intimidation because it's a foreign dish; and last, good pasta always come al dente, which literally meant with bite to your teeth in Italian.
My kids could tell if your pasta is good or the otherwise.
Just days ago, we decided to have a quiet family dinner at one of the so-called Italian fine dining restaurants from our local neighborhood. We loved the location. We loved it that there was just us eating at dinner time on a Sunday evening while we "people-watched" the families flocking to the big mall across the street. We loved the ambiance, the soft lighting and the sweet music being played in the air.
The servers were nice. We thought it was going to be a perfect night until our pasta was served. It was overcooked, stale, it tasted like it was thawed from long storage...how disappointing. So my kids, knowing that the money that went to pay for that dinner had been hard-earned, managed to finish their plates with occasional look of dismay on their faces. At length, we discussed over dinner what not to order in Filipino restaurants claiming to serve Italian. We concluded that if we wanted authentic Italian pasta, it's either we invite a true blue Italian cook to come over at our house or just D-I-O, Do-It-OURSELVES!
