#4: Make pasta like a nonna would. From scratch.

One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating. ~Luciano Pavarotti and William Wright, Pavarotti, My Own Story


Damn straight, Pav.
My eyes were opened to the world of fresh pasta during a year living in Modena, Italy. How had I gone 21 years eating pasta OUT OF A PACKET?! Modena, incidentally, happens to be the hometown of the big man himself, Mr Pavarotti. So, Big Man, #4 on my 30x30 list is dedicated to you.

Now let's set the record straight. I struggle to follow recipes. I take my cooking style more from the "just chuck it in and it will be alright" school of thought. Such a philosophy may have been my undoing in tackling this challenge.

I wanted my pasta to look like this.

I love how the recipe is described as being for "casual entertaining." Oh- I thought cheese and crackers equaled "casual entertaining." All these years I've had it wrong. On this particular pasta-making eve, I was "casually entertaining" my husband.

Pretending that my life looked like a magazine spread, I even measured out all of the ingredients before beginning the cooking process.

The dog was my cooking buddy......

..... until he got sick and tired of listening to my attempts to authentically channel a nonna (read: swearing like a madwoman) and decided that watching some cricket was a better option.

Everything was fine whilst in the bowl....

It was once the dough left the bowl that things got a little hairy.

By the cooking stage, I was wondering why I had chosen to make the most visually unattractive form of pasta known to nonna-kind.

It looks like it's come straight out of a food magazine shoot. If you squint really hard.

But, really- who cares about how it looks? What about the taste?
The last word goes to The Man:
Me: So, what did you think?
Him: Is there more?