Yesterday I made my first batch of pasta noodles. Kate was making linguini, and invited me to come get over my fear of the pasta maker.
I didn’t exactly want to go, because although Dave bought me a pasta maker for Christmas (by request), and the thing is set up and sitting on the counter, I haven’t been at all inclined to use it. Store bought is usually good enough. And if I need fresh I have an excuse to drive up to Pasta Fresh out on Harlem and Belmont, where I can see owners Tony and Tina and be handed a hot slice of focaccia while I wait for them to pack my order, and where I can enjoy the feeling in that little shop, which always reminds me of the eve of Christmas Eve years ago, when I went there for the first time. I’d moved out to that neighborhood after a breakup and was thoroughly depressed about life and dreading the holidays and wanting only to hide out in my hobbit hole of a basement flat in my cousin Lizzie’s building.
But Lizzie dragged me out on some cooking errands. She made me go to Caputo’s so she could get her produce. Then she made me go to Pasta Fresh so she could get noodles for the lasagna. Like a zombie without an appetite I trundled along, waiting til I could get back home to my two loyal mutts who would not annoy me by speaking English and expecting me to speak it back.
Then we got into Pasta Fresh and something happened. They greeted us so cheerfully, the white-haired man and his sexy wife, and started making up Liz’s order. Then they brought out a warm arancini, cut up and steaming, and tried to hand me a piece. “I don’t eat meat,” I said. So they returned with slices of calzone. To be polite, I took a bite, and then another. It was like the cheerful ghost of a calzone — impossibly light, with chunks of fresh tomato, not too much cheese, not too doughy. To wash it down, they handed us flutes of champagne. I ate and drank, and felt cared for by people I’d never met.
Liz asked Tony how things were going and he said something slightly sad, maybe about missing people who were gone. But he was smiling and he raised his glass to us. I felt a rush of Christmas spirit, joy and nostalgia and some sort of fellowship you can only share with strangers. That moment picked me up and lifted me past my sadness, and the holidays went better after that.
Looking back, I don’t know what I had to be sad about. A breakup? So what. It wasn’t like I’d lost my parents yet. I hadn’t even lost a dog yet. But of course, your heart doesn’t grade on a curve. So anyway, I like going to Pasta Fresh. And I’m afraid of my pasta maker. It’s so shiny and silent.
But when my friend Kate cooks, I show up. She serves delicious food and always makes it look easy. So it’s not just good to eat, it’s fun to be around when she’s cooking. And having claimed I wanted to learn how she made noodles I figured I might as well do it on a night when she had a fresh Puttanesca sauce ready to top them. So off I went, accompanied only by dog Django since Dave had a rehearsal.
Kate let me do almost everything – add three eggs and two tablespoons of water to two cups of flour and a half-cup of semolina, mix them, knead them (Kate had to take over briefly because I didn’t knead hard enough), and divide into a couple of balls. Let sit a half-hour and then feed through the pasta machine, level by level until it’s thin enough. Then through the other part to split into noodles. Sort of amazingly easy. And heaped with the sauce, so so good. Django is not big on starches, but she kept her mouth open like a bird, waiting for each next delicious strip of saucy goodness.
I think the solution is not to go less to Pasta Fresh, but to have noodles more often, so I can fit in some of my own. Because I didn’t even mention the other thing about Pasta Fresh, how it’s right near Palermo Bakery, where the best cookies in the world can be purchased. But that’s another story.