Pasta Cooking Quotes

She wished she had a little yellow house of her own, with a flower box full of real flowers and herbs – pansies and rosemary – and a sweet lover who would swing dance with her in the evenings and cook pasta and read poetry aloud.

I do have some leftover chicken and pasta. (Grace) And wine?...That’s acceptable (Julian) Look, buster, I’m not your cooking wench. Mess with me and I’ll feed you Alpo. (Grace)

Want me to warm up the sauce?” “Do we do that? I mean, it’s in a jar, right? Can’t you just dump it over the pasta?” “Well, you can, but it tastes better if you warm it up.” “Oh.” Eve sighed. “This is complicated. No wonder I never cook.

In normal life, "simplicity" is synonymous with "easy to do," but when a chef uses the word, it means "takes a lifetime to learn.

I'll cook the water for the pasta

You can't do traditional work at a modern pace. Traditional work has traditional rhythms. You need calm. You can be busy, but you must remain calm.

Food made by hand is an act of defiance and runs contrary to everything in our modernity. Find it; eat it; it will go. It has been around for millennia. Now it is evanescent, like a season.

The most important knowledge is understanding what you can't do.

When the phone rang I was in the kitchen, boiling a potful of spaghetti and whistling along with an FM broadcast of the overture to Rossini's 'The Thieving Magpie,' which has to be the perfect music for cooking pasta.

Toxic relationships are like a good pasta that has been overcooked.

You don't learn knife skills at cooking school, because they give you only six onions and no matter how hard you focus on those six onions there are only six, and you're not going to learn as much as when you cut up a hundred.

Kitchen solace—the feeling that a delicious meal is simmering on the kitchen stove, misting up the windows, and that at any moment your lover will sit down to dinner with you and, between mouthfuls, gaze happily into your eyes. (Also known as living.)” RECIPES THE CUISINE of Provence is as diverse as its scenery: fish by the coast, vegetables in the countryside, and in the mountains lamb and a variety of staple dishes containing pulses. One region’s cooking is influenced by olive oil, another’s is based on wine, and pasta dishes are common along the Italian border. East kisses West in Marseilles with hints of mint, saffron and cumin, and the Vaucluse is a paradise for truffle and confectionery lovers. Yet

I like cooking pasta. Maybe it's that I always wanted to be Italian American in some dark part of my soul; maybe I get off on that final squirt of emulsifying extra virgin, just after the basil goes in, I don't know.

A three-star Italian chef pal of mine was recently talking about why he — a proud Tuscan who makes his own pasta and sauces from scratch daily and runs one of the best restaurant kitchens in New York — would never be so foolish as to hire any Italians to cook on his line. He greatly prefers Ecuadorians, as many chefs do: 'The Italian guy? You screaming at him in the rush, "Where's that risotto?! Is that fucking risotto ready yet? Gimme that risotto!" . . . and the Italian . . . he's gonna give it to you . . . An Ecuadorian guy? He's gonna just turn his back . . . and stir the risotto and keep cooking it until it's done the way you showed him. That's what I want.

What‟s that?” “That‟s a steak for me and mushroom pasta for you. The pasta is made with tofu and palm oil instead of eggs. I cooked it myself. My steak is wrapped in several layers of foil. It‟s not touching the container with your food, so no worries.

Once the pasta is sauced, serve it promptly, inviting your guests and family to put off talking and start eating.

Second, and contrary to what some foreigners seem to think, not every pasta dish should be doused with grated cheese: you must not sprinkle cheese on pasta with any kind of cheese; ... and most Italians would rather die than put grated cheese on pasta made with fresh tomatoes.

There are as many ways to make Hungarian goulash as there are cooks in Hungary. The dish’s origin was from the ninth century when Hungarian shepherds or gulyás threw in whatever they had to make stew. Some recipes call for beef, pork, veal, or lamb; some include pasta, and some don’t. Take your pick of other ingredients: vegetables, potatoes, beans, sauerkraut, wine; no two recipes are the same except they all have paprika.

She turned and smiled. “Kitchen-sink pasta.” “My favorite. But you really ought to come up with a better name for it than kitchen-sink pasta. Sounds only slightly more appealing than bathtub gefilte fish.” She shuddered. “Who in god’s name would make bathtub gefilte fish?” “I dated a Jewish girl whose grandmother made it,” I laughed.

Think about it: If you have saved just enough to have your own house, your own car, a modicum of income to pay for food, clothes, and a few conveniences, and your everyday responsibilities start and end only with yourself… You can afford not to do anything outside of breathing, eating, and sleeping. Time would be an endless, white blanket. Without folds and pleats or sudden rips. Monday would look like Sunday, going sans adrenaline, slow, so slow and so unnoticed. Flowing, flowing, time is flowing in phrases, in sentences, in talk exchanges of people that come as pictures and videos, appearing, disappearing, in the safe, distant walls of Facebook. Dial fast food for a pizza, pasta, a burger or a salad. Cooking is for those with entire families to feed. The sala is well appointed. A day-maid comes to clean. Quietly, quietly she dusts a glass figurine here, the flat TV there. No words, just a ho-hum and then she leaves as silently as she came. Press the shower knob and water comes as rain. A TV remote conjures news and movies and soaps. And always, always, there’s the internet for uncomplaining company. Outside, little boys and girls trudge along barefoot. Their tinny, whiny voices climb up your windowsill asking for food. You see them. They don’t see you. The same way the vote-hungry politicians, the power-mad rich, the hey-did-you-know people from newsrooms, and the perpetually angry activists don’t see you. Safely ensconced in your tower of concrete, you retreat. Uncaring and old./HOW EASY IT IS NOT TO CARE

I want to strangle my husband and slam the door as I leave. I want to leave a box of pasta on the counter with a note that says, “cook your own dinner and suck your own dick.

Alba, leaning against me like cold cooked pasta

My general ratios for measuring salt are simple: 1 percent salt by weight for meats, vegetables, and grains, and 2 percent salinity for water for blanching vegetables and pasta.

I think about her as she is in front of me, in her weird overalls and woolen socks and fancy leather slippers. I wonder if she still wears that Indian shawl around the house, if she still drinks hot water with a spoonful of some honey that she claims has miraculous, antiviral, immortality-giving properties, whether she still plays the piano late at night and insists on cooking pasta in not-quite-boiling water because she’s too impatient to wait. I wonder whether she still crashes the gears on the car as she’s driving but denies all knowledge of this. I wonder if there is anything of mine that she’s kept, any shirts, any books, any letters. I wonder if she still walks in her sleep and whether there is anybody there to get up, follow her, and lead her back to bed.

I make 'Buela's recipe for sofrito that I'll use to season the ground beef. Softening the garlic and onions, adding tomato paste. This is the first step for most traditional dishes, the flavoring that gives a rich taste for everything from beans to stew. Then I brown meat and make a homemade sauce from fresh tomatoes. I grate fine shreds of mozzarella cheese and boil sheets of pasta. While the oven is preheating, I slowly layer my guilt, my hope, and a hundred dreams. I don't know if it means anything at all, but 'Buela has always said my hands are magical, and I use them now to put all my feelings into the pan.

Italian cuisine, at its very best, is a math problem that doesn't add up. A tangle of noodles, a few scraps of pork, a grating of cheese are transformed into something magical. 1+1=3: more alchemy than cooking.

I’m not dressed for the piano bar, but I won’t go upstairs to get clothes. He is expecting me to stay and to apologize and cook dinner and tiptoe around his mood, but instead I’m gonna go buy a new dress and shoes for tonight, then get to the restaurant by six and treat myself to a long, slow dinner with appetizers, pasta, and dessert. And wine. Then I’ll play vintage jazz in front of a nice group of folks who actually appreciate me. That’s what I’ll do instead.

It is, I concluded, a side effect of this kind of food, one that's handed down from one generation to another, often in conditions of adversity, that you end up thinking of the dead, that the very stuff that sustains you tastes somehow of mortality. (198)

But in those first hours after you take it, your brain is tuned in like nothing you can imagine. Eyes like the Hubble telescope, sensing light that's not even on the spectrum. You might be able to read minds, make time stop, cook pasta that's exactly right every time.

Boiling, the technique, should almost never be used, with the exception of green vegetables and pasta. Very few food items benefit from the agitation of boiling. Boiling will fray tender food, and in stocks, soups, and sauces it will emulsify impurities into the liquid.

When the phone rang I was in the kitchen, boiling a potful of spaghetti and whistling along with an FM broadcast of tree overture to Rossini’s The Thieving Magpie, which has to be the perfect music for cooking pasta. In a place far away from anyone or anywhere, I drifted off for a moment.

A long-time associate, Beth, who likes to refer to herself as the 'Grill Bitch', excelled at putting loudmouths and fools into their proper place. She refused to behave any differently than her male co-workers: she'd change in the same locker area, dropping her pants right alongside them. She was as sexually aggressive, and as vocal about it, as her fellow cooks, but unlikely to suffer behavior she found demeaning. One sorry Moroccan cook who pinched her ass found himself suddenly bent over a cutting board with Beth dry-humping him from behind, saying, 'How do you like it, bitch?' The guy almost died of shame — and never repeated that mistake again. Another female line cook I had the pleasure of working with arrived at work one morning to find that an Ecuadorian pasta cook had decorated her station with some particularly ugly hard-core pornography of pimply-assed women getting penetrated in every orifice by pot-bellied guys with prison tattoos and back hair. She didn't react at all, but a little later, while passing through the pasta man's station, casually remarked. 'Jose, I see you brought in some photos of the family. Mom looks good for her age.

I stood in the doorway of one room, lost in a meditation of the house's recurring habits. People had made love here, sweated through pregnancy, gave birth, looked after children, became ill, died, the fire always burning in the kitchen. In this room, the next generation had done the same, the fire still burning. And the next generation, for thousand years.

I'll make dinner." That means dried pasta again, I suppose, cooked on Armande's wood-stove. There's a jar of it in the pantry, though I dare not think how old it is. Anouk and Rosette love pasta above almost everything else; with a little dash of oil and some basil from the garden, they will both be happy. There are peaches, too; and brandied cherries and plums from Narcisse, and a flan aux pruneaux from his wife, and some galette and cheese from Luc.

We start our meal in the kitchen, right beside the blazing oven, where one of Franco's cooks chops a filet of local grass-fed beef into rough cubes and dresses it with olive oil and wisps of lemon rind. A puffy disc of dough emerges from the oven, which Franco cuts into wedges before heaping it with mounds of this restrained tartare. The union of warm, smoky bread and cool, grassy beef is enough to make me want to camp out in the kitchen for the rest of the night.

I’m not dressed for the piano bar, but I won’t go upstairs to get clothes. He is expecting me to stay and to apologize and cook dinner and tiptoe around his mood, but instead I’m gonna go buy a new dress and shoes for tonight, then get to the restaurant by six and treat myself to a long, slow dinner with appetizers, pasta, and dessert. And wine. Then I’ll play vintage jazz in front of a nice group of folks who actually appreciate me. That’s what I’ll do instead. Fuck him.

He took out a carrot and thee onion half. I'm not sure I'd ever seen anyone use half an onion. Or rather, I'd never seen anyone save half an onion he hadn't used. The real secret ingredient, however, was the package of lardons fumés- plump little Legos of pork- deep pink and marbled with fat. He dumped them into a pan with the chopped vegetables (he may have washed the pan from the charlotte), and the mixture began sizzling away. A box of tagliatelle, the pasta spooled like birds' nests, completed the meal.

Memories fill my mind, as though they are my own, of not just events from Gideon's life, but of various flavors and textures: breast milk running easily down into my stomach, chicken cooked with butter and parsley, split peas and runner beans and butter beans, and oranges and peaches, strawberries freshly picked from the plant; hot, strong coffees each morning; pasta and walnuts and bread and brie; then something sweet: a pan cotta, with rose and saffron, and a white wine: tannin, soil, stone fruits, white blossom; and---oh my god---ramen, soba, udon, topped with nori and sesame seeds; miso with tofu and spring onions, fugu and tuna sashimi dipped in soy sauce, onigiri with a soured plum stuffed in the middle; and then something I don't know, something unfamiliar but at the same time deeply familiar, something I didn't realize I craved: crispy ground lamb, thick, broken noodles, chili oil, fragrant rice cooked in coconut milk, tamarind... and then a bright green dessert---the sweet, floral flavor of pandan fills my mouth.

While you can sell ramen relatively expensively in Japan, you can’t do it in America. People will unblinkingly pay $ 20 a plate for spaghetti pomodoro—which is just canned tomatoes and boxed pasta—but they will bitch to the high heavens about forking over $ 20 for a bowl of soup that requires three or four or five different cooked and composed components to put together. Plus, you will rake yourself over the coals looking for ingredients that even approximate what you can buy down the alley from your shop in Tokyo.

Salt can take a while to dissolve in foods that are low in water, so add it to bread dough early. Leave it out of Italian pasta dough altogether, allowing the salted water to do the work of seasoning as it cooks. Add it early to ramen and udon doughs to strengthen its gluten, as this will result in the desired chewiness. Add salt later to batters and doughs for cakes, pancakes, and delicate pastries to keep them tender, but make sure to whisk these mixes thoroughly so that the salt is evenly distributed before cooking.

His ragù begins the same way all ragù begin: with finely diced onion, carrot, and celery sautéed in olive oil, the sacred soffritto. "It's important to really caramelize the vegetables. That's where the flavor comes from." Later come two pounds of coarsely ground beef ("from the neck or shoulder- something with fat and flavor") and a pound of ground pork butt, browned separately from the vegetables and deglazed with a cup of white wine (pignoletto, of course). Peeled tomatoes, tomato paste, bay leaves, and three hours of simmering over a low flame. Seasoning? "Salt. Never pepper.

con Zucchine alla Nerano — SERVES 4 — About 16fl oz sunflower oil or vegetable oil, or, if you choose, olive oil 8 to 10 small zucchine (courgettes) 75g chopped fresh basil Sea salt to taste Extra virgin olive oil 500g spaghetti 200g grated Parmigiano-Reggiano • Put the sunflower oil in a large pot and bring to a low boil over medium-high heat. • Slice the zucchine into thin rounds and fry in the oil until they are golden brown. Remove and set aside on paper towels. • Sprinkle with basil and salt. • Transfer to a bowl and drizzle liberally with olive oil. • Boil the pasta until al dente and strain, reserving about two cupfuls of the pasta water. • Place the cooked pasta in a large pan or pot over low heat along with the zucchine mixture and combine gently. Add the pasta water, a little at a time, to create a creamy texture. You may not use all of the pasta water. Now add some of the Parmigiano to the mixture and continue to combine by stirring gently and tossing. When the mixture has a slight creaminess, remove from the stove and serve immediately. Note: The zucchine mixture can be refrigerated for about 5 days for use at a later date. Best to bring it to room temperature before using.

Fresh Pasta Dough Recipe INGREDIENTS: 1 ½ cups flour ½ cup semolina flour (pasta flour) 2 whole eggs, at room temperature 3 egg yolks, at room temperature DIRECTIONS: In a large bowl, whisk together the flour and the semolina. Create a well in the center and add the eggs and egg yolks. Using a fork, break up the eggs then gradually start to draw flour from the edges of the well into the mixture. If the dough gets too firm to mix with the fork switch to mixing with your hands. Continue to work in flour until the dough no longer sticks to your hands; you may not need to incorporate all of the flour. (I used a bit more than what the recipe called for.) Transfer the dough to a lightly floured surface and knead the dough for 8 to 10 minutes or until it is smooth and pliable. Wrap the dough tightly in plastic wrap and allow to rest for at least 30 minutes. If using a pasta roller: Divide the dough into 4 pieces. Starting with the machine set to the widest setting, pass the dough through the rollers. Fold the dough into thirds and pass it through again 2 more times. Continue passing the pasta through the machine, reducing the setting a few notches each time. You may need to dust a bit with flour if the dough sticks to the rollers at all. Once you reach your desired thickness, use the cutting attachment to cut the pasta sheet into fettuccine. Dust the cut pasta with more flour to prevent sticking and repeat with the remaining dough. If using a rolling pin: Divide the dough in half. Dust your surface with flour and sprinkle generously on your rolling pin. *Roll out the dough as thin and as evenly possible, adding flour as needed to prevent sticking. Use a paring knife (a pizza cutter works great!) to cut your dough into even ribbons, then set aside, dusting the cut pasta with more flour. Repeat with the remaining dough. (At this point, the pasta can be transferred to a sealable plastic bag and frozen for up to 3 months; do not defrost before cooking.) Cook the pasta in a large pot of generously salted boiling water, checking for doneness after just 1 minute; fresh pasta cooks very quickly. As soon as it is al dente, no more than 3 or 4 minutes, drain, reserving some of the cooking water if desired for saucing the pasta. Toss with your sauce, loosen with some of the reserved cooking water as needed and serve immediately. *Note:  You must get the dough as thin as possible and cut them into small strips, otherwise, it will be too thick and end up having the texture of dumplings.

In the scrubbed and gleaming kitchen, here mother's rolled-out pasta dough used to cover the entire top of the chrome and Formica table. Rosa could still picture the long sleek muscles in her mother's arms as she wielded the red-handled rolling pin, drawing it in smooth, rhythmic strokes over the butter-yellow dough. The reek of the burnt-out motor was a corruption here, in Mamma's world. The smell of her baking ciambellone used to be so powerful it drew the neighbors in, and Rosa could remember the women in their aprons and scuffs, sitting on the back stoop, sharing coffee and Mamma's citrusy ciambellone, fresh from the oven.

Load the sailboat with bottles of white wine, olive oil, fishing rods, and yeasty, dark-crusted bread. Work your way carefully out of the narrow channels of the Cabras port on the western shore of Sardinia. Set sail for the open seas. Navigate carefully around the archipelago of small boats fishing for sea bass, bream, squid. Steer clear of the lines of mussel nets swooping in long black arcs off the coastline. When you spot the crumbling stone tower, turn the boat north and nuzzle it gently into the electric blue-green waters along ancient Tharros. Drop anchor. Strip down to your bathing suit. Load into the transport boat and head for shore. After a swim, make for the highest point on the peninsula, the one with the view of land and sea and history that will make your knees buckle. Stay focused. You're not here to admire the sun-baked ruins of one of Sardinia's oldest civilizations, a five-thousand-year-old settlement that wears the footprints of its inhabitants- Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans- like the layers of a cake. You're here to pick herbs growing wildly among the ancient tombs and temples, under shards of broken vases once holding humans' earliest attempts at inebriation. Taste this! Like peppermint, but spicy. And this! A version of wild lemon thyme, perfect with seafood. Pluck a handful of finocchio marino,sea fennel, a bright burst of anise with an undertow of salt. Withfinocchioin fist, reboard the transport vessel and navigate toward the closest buoy. Grab the bright orange plastic, roll it over, and scrape off the thicket of mussels growing beneath. Repeat with the other buoys until you have enough mussels to fill a pot. In the belly of the boat, bring the dish together: Scrub the mussels. Bring a pot of seawater to a raucous boil and drop in the spaghetti- cento grammi a testa. While the pasta cooks, blanch a few handfuls of the wild fennel to take away some of the sting. Remove the mussels from their shells and combine with sliced garlic, a glass of seawater, and a deluge of peppery local olive oil in a pan. Take the pasta constantly, checking for doneness. (Don't you dare overcook it!) When only the faintest resistance remains in the middle, drain and add to the pan of mussels. Move the pasta fast and frequently with a pair of tongs, emulsifying the water and mussel juice with the oil. Keep stirring and drizzling in oil until a glistening sheen forms on the surface of the pasta. This is called la mantecatura, the key to all great seafood pastas, so take the time to do it right.

We sat around for hours, turning over the mysteries of the universe, giggling like a dorm room full of stoners, all of us seemingly intoxicated by the truffle's powerful pheromones. A new ritual was born, an annual Truffle Fest that stretched on for the better part of a decade across state lines and continental divides. In that time, I've cooked dozens of truffle-larded dishes. Soft scrambled eggs. Scallops and salsify in parchment. Wild mushroom pizza. Butter-bombed risotto. Whole roasted chicken with truffle slices slipped like splinters under the skin. Above all, handmade pasta tossed with melted butter and anointed tableside with truffle- the finest vessel for the tuber's dreamy fragrance.

She was the world's best cook. Every night, she used to sing "Funiculi" while she fixed supper- puttanesca sauce, homemade bread, pasta she made every Wednesday. Rosa had loved nothing better than working side by side with her in the bright scrubbed kitchen in the house on Prospect Street, turning out fresh pasta, baking a calzone on a winter afternoon, adding a pinch of basil or fennel to the sauce. Most of all, Rosa could picture, like an inedible snapshot in her mind, Mamma standing at the sink and looking out the window, a soft, slightly mysterious smile on her face. Herr "Mona Lisa smile," Pop used to call it. Rosa didn't know about that. She had seen a postcard of the Mona Lisa and thought Mamma was way prettier.

If you want waiters in tuxedos with white linen cloths over their arms, menus with unpronounceable words all over them, and high-priced wines served in silver ice buckets when you go out for Italian food, our little restaurant is not the place to come. But if you mostly want good, solid, home-cooked pasta with tasty sauces made with real vegetables and spices by a real Italian Mama and will trade white linen for red-and-white checked plastic tablecloths, you'll like our place just fine. If you're okay with a choice of just two wines, red or white, we'll give you as much of it as you want, from our famous bottomless wine bottle — free with your dinner. This restaurant owner took competitive disadvantages and turned them into a good, solid, “fun” selling story.

Livia had burnt the onions. And not just any onions, but the ones in her famous sugo alla genovese, that wonderful sauce of reduced onions, flavored with beef stock, celery and chopped parsley, that together with pummarola and ragù form the holy trinity of Neapolitan pasta sauces. To make a true genovese the onions have to be cooked for around five hours over the gentlest heat, stirring occasionally to prevent them from sticking to the bottom of the pan and splashing them with water whenever they look like they are drying out. Onions are remarkable things, for cooked like this they lose almost all their familiar oniony taste and become an intensely sweet, aromatic jam, yet if a single piece happens to burn in the cooking, the acrid taste will permeate the whole dish.

I feel like it's comically obvious whose meal is whose. Benny's fish is beautifully seared, with a lemon-rosemary glaze and sitting on a bed of wild rice with grilled asparagus on the side. It's becoming clearer to me all the time that the boy understated his abilities that first day, telling me he could only do pasta and pastries. Anyone who can whip something like that up without a recipe at their side is a pro in my book. On the other hand, my dish is straight out of a heart surgeon's worst nightmares. Piles of fried fish still shimmery with grease and heavily salted and peppered, next to mashed potatoes with an extra pat of butter on top, as if the multiple sticks that went into their preparation weren't enough. It's stick-to-your-ribs, clog-your-arteries goodness.

What sort of pasta are you making?" "Pasta con funghi." He watched as she took a bowl of strange, round, reddish brown mushrooms out of the larder. The air immediately filled with their rich, earthy scent. Ripe as a well-cellared cheese, but tinged with the odors of leaf mold and decay, it reminded him a little of the smell of offal in his native Roman dishes. "How many kinds of funghi do you cook with?" he asked. "Oh, hundreds. It just depends on what I find in the woods." "You pick these yourself?" "Of course." As the smell of funghi combined with the scent of hot butter and garlic in the frying pan, Bruno felt his nostrils flare. And not just his nostrils. The smell was stirring up his blood, awakening sensation in a part of him that had been quiescent for a long time.

His antipasto was the classic Roman fritto misto---tiny morsels of mixed offal, including slivers of poached brains and liver, along with snails, artichokes, apples, pears, and bread dipped in milk, all deep-fried in a crisp egg-and-bread-crumb batter. This was to be followed by a primo of rigatoni alla pajata---pasta served with intestines from a baby calf so young that they were still full of its mother's milk, simmered with onions, white wine, tomatoes, cloves, and garlic. For the secondo they would be having milza in umido--- a stewed lamb's spleen, cooked with sage, anchovies, and pepper. A bitter salad of puntarelle al' acciuga---chicory sprouts with anchovy---would cleanse the palate, to be followed by a simple dolce of fragole in aceto, gorella strawberries in vinegar.

Not every change is so subtle. There are chefs in Rome taking the same types of risks other young cooks around the world are using to bend the boundaries of the dining world. At Metamorfosi, among the gilded streets of Parioli, the Columbian-born chef Roy Caceres and his crew turn ink-stained bodies into ravioli skins and sous-vide egg and cheese foam into new-age carbonara and apply the tools of the modernist kitchen to create a broad and abstract interpretation of Italian cuisine. Alba Esteve Ruiz trained at El Celler de Can Roca in Spain, one of the world's most inventive restaurants, before, in 2013, opening Marzapane Roma, where frisky diners line up for a taste of prawn tartare with smoked eggplant cream and linguine cooked in chamomile tea spotted with microdrops of lemon gelée.

It never ceased to surprise him how many of her dishes were cooked without meat. Her pasta sauces often consisted of just one or two ingredients, such as garlic and oil, or grated lemon zest and cream. Many more were based on a vegetable, with peperone, anchovy or cheese providing a subtle kick. Often it didn't occur to him that he hadn't eaten meat until after the meal was over. His very favorite dish was her melanzane alla parmigiana, but it was only as his palate became more trained that he realized this, too, contained nothing more substantial than dense chunks of eggplant. As for gravy, he had never missed it once. He mentioned this to her, and she laughed. "We've never had a lot of meat to spare in Campania. Even before the war, it was expensive. So we had to learn to use our ingenuity.

I began by preparing my pasta: my deft fingers forming the intricate shapes of rigatoni, ravioli, spiralli, spaghetti, cannelloni, and linguini. Then I would brew sauces of sardines, or anchovies or zucchini or sheep's cheeses, of saffron, pine nuts, currants, and fennel. These I would simmer in the huge iron cauldrons, which were constantly bubbling above the fire. My pasta dishes, I have to say, were famous throughout the province, and the scent of my sauces carried by the breeze was sufficient to fill a poor man's stomach. I also kneaded bread and produced the finest pane rimacinato, the most delicious ciabatta and focaccia that had ever been tasted in the region. Sometimes I would add wild thyme to the dough, or fragrant rosemary; plucked fresh from the hedgerow, with the dew still on the leaves.

So when I get home, I go shopping. I fill the cart with steak, fish, broccoli, avocados, canned squid, tuna, tomato juice, romaine lettuce, sour cream, and cashews—tubs of cashews, because they’ll be my go-to temptation snuffer. Also on the “yes” list: eggs, cheese, whole cream, dry white wine, Scotch, and salsa. But no fruit, breads, rice, potatoes, pasta, or honey. No beans, which means no tofu or soy of any stripe. No chips, no beer, no milk or yogurt. No deli ham or roast beef, either, since they’re often cured in sugar. Turkey was fine if you cooked it yourself, but even then you have to be careful. I thought I’d hit the perfect multi-meal solution when I came across a stack of small Butterballs in the frozen food section, and only as an afterthought did I check the label and discover they were sugar-injected.

Buffalo Chicken Mac & Cheese This easy meal combines the flavors of buffalo wings and mac and cheese.  To cut down on prep/cooking time, use a pre-cooked rotisserie chicken! 1 Cup milk 1 (12 oz) can evaporated milk ¼ Tsp garlic powder ½ Cup buffalo hot sauce (Frank’s Red Hot is a good bet) 3 Cups shredded cheese (just cheddar or a mix if you’d like) 1 lb pre-cooked chicken, shredded ½ lb uncooked pasta (such as elbow macaroni) Chopped onion/celery/carrots, crumbled blue cheese (optional) Mix milk, evaporated milk, garlic powder, and hot sauce in slow cooker until combined.  Add salt & pepper (to taste).  Stir in cheese, chicken, and uncooked pasta. Cook on low for approximately 1 hour, stir, then continue cooking an additional 30-60 minutes, or until pasta is tender. Garnish with chopped vegetables and/or blue cheese (if desired).  Enjoy!

Then it's time for our first complete bites after we mix the gnocchi and sauce together with a sprinkling of parmesan over the top. Spearing one of the little potato pillows with my fork, I drag it through some extra sauce before popping it into my mouth. The flavors explode on my tongue, my taste buds experiencing something akin to euphoria as the fresh tomatoes and garlic and herbs and salt all meld around a light, fluffy center. I fight the urge to moan aloud, because oh. My. Pasta-loving stars. I thought I loved pasta before. But then I met this gnocchi, which Benny says isn't even technically pasta, and all I know is that it tastes like my every good Italian restaurant and home-cooked comfort food memory rolled into one and amplified. I feel like I'm about to melt to the floor, literally light-headed from this rapturous food experience. The dish is savory and hearty and warms me from the inside out.

Bruce has always been the cook in the family, and when Jordan was a preschooler, the little boy showed up in the kitchen and asked to help prepare dinner. They had been partners ever since. At first, Jordan was given a butter knife, which he used to cut soft vegetables. He arranged food on plates. He tasted pasta to see if it was done, and sauces for saltiness. By the time he was ten, he was helping Bruce choose recipes. He received his own subscription to Bon Appétit for Hanukkah and pored over every copy, folding down the corner on recipes he wanted to try. Eddie became their taster, coming to the kitchen from the piano, or the book he was reading, to give the dish a thumbs-up. When Bruce pictured happiness, it was cooking in the kitchen beside Jordan while listening to Eddie play the piano in the next room. That scene repeated regularly and made Bruce thrum with joy. Every time, he thought, I will not take this for granted.

FETTUCCINI “PORCINI” (Australian Fettuccini) Trudi’s 1st Note: We just returned from a trip to Australia. This is my version of a recipe we experienced in Sydney. It’s easy to make and a wonderful flavor. For the Pasta: Prepare a package of your favorite brand fettuccini pasta as instructed on the package. Use the size that serves 4. When the pasta is cooked, drain it, give it a stir to keep it from sticking together, cover it loosely with foil and set it aside on a cold burner to wait for its yummy sauce. For the Sauce: ¼ pound bacon (regular sliced, not thick) ½ pound (8 ounces) fresh mushrooms sliced, or chopped ½ cup chopped onions (regular yellow onions or green onions—if you use green onions, you can use up to 2 inches of the stem) 4-inch square of fresh salmon filet 15-ounce (approximate—if it’s a bit more, that’s okay) jar of prepared Alfredo sauce Pan fry the bacon until it’s crispy and lift it out of the fat with a slotted spoon to drain it on paper towels. Use the remaining bacon fat in the pan to fry the mushrooms until they are very well done. Add the onions to the pan and continue to fry until the onions are translucent and fully cooked. Cut the raw salmon into cubes and add it to the pan. Fry it until the salmon is fully cooked. Add the drained bacon pieces to the pan and add the Alfredo sauce. Stir everything together until it’s well-combined and heated through. Arrange the pasta you’ve cooked on 4 plates. Ladle the delicious mixture in the frying pan over the pasta and serve to rave reviews! Trudi’s 2nd Note: The porcini is in quotes because I’m sure the restaurant used them, but regular mushrooms work just as well and are easier on the budget. Fresh salmon works great but since it sort of falls apart in the cooking anyway, you probably could use canned or packaged salmon and get the same results. If you prefer, you could also use packaged Alfredo sauce mix and prepare it yourself.

As we walk through Savignio, the copper light of dusk settling over the town's narrow streets, we stop anyone we can find to ask for his or her ragù recipe. A retired policeman says he likes an all-pork sauce with a heavy hit of pancetta, the better for coating the pasta. A gelato maker explains that a touch of milk defuses the acidity of the tomato and ties the whole sauce together. Overhearing our kitchen talk below, an old woman in a navy cardigan pokes her head out of a second-story window to offer her take on the matter: "I only use tomatoes from my garden- fresh when they're in season, preserved when it gets cold." Inspired by the Savignio citizenry, we buy meat from the butcher, vegetables and wine from a small stand in the town's piazza, and head to Alessandro's house to simmer up his version of ragù: two parts chopped skirt steak, one part ground pancetta, the sautéed vegetable trio, a splash of dry white wine, and a few canned San Marzano tomatoes.

It's eight, and it's time to prepare the filet mignons encrusted with pepper, sliced and served with an Israeli couscous salad with almonds, feta cheese, cherry tomatoes, roasted red peppers, preserved lemons, braised fennel, and artichoke bottoms. Funny, when I'd first made this meal for Caro, she didn't believe me when I'd presented the fine or medium grains at Moroccan or Algerian restaurants. Regardless of the name, Israeli couscous is more pasta-like and not crushed, but delicious all the same, and I love the texture---especially when making a Mediterranean-infused creation that celebrates the flavors of both spring and summer. While Oded preps the salad, I sear the steaks, and an aroma hits my nostrils---more potent than pepper---with a hint of floral notes, hazelnut, and citrus. I don't think anything of it, because my recipe is made up from a mix of many varieties of peppercorns---black, green, white, red, and pink. Maybe I'd added in a fruitier green?

Few people put more thought into the tiny details than the team behind the ever-expanding Roscioli empire, one of the nerve centers of the cucina romana moderna, found just a few steps from the Campo de' Fiori. Sitting at a small table inside the Ristorante Salumeria Roscioli, a hybrid space that functions as a deli counter in the front and a full-service restaurant in the back, general manager Valerio Capriotti tells me with conviction that Italian food is flourishing- advancing in ways it hasn't in years, if ever, thanks in large part to the efforts of small producers who put their lives into raising rare breeds of pig, growing heirloom varietals of wheat, and milking pampered dairy cows and sheep to create the types of ingredients that drive restaurants like Roscioli forward. "Modern Italian cuisine isn't about technique," he tells me, "it's about ingredients. We know more now than we ever did about how things are made and what they do when we cook and eat them.

She pulls from a shelf certain rare spices and sugars that her successor is unlikely to use. Insulating the jars with softbound books and sheafs of cooking notes, she packs them in a carton that came to this kitchen holding boxes of Italian pasta. She examines the fanciful designs on a container of sugar imported from Turkey, a favorite finish for the surface of cookies: bearclaws, butter wafers. The large, faceted granules glitter like bluish rhinestones; children always choose those cookies first. She wonders if she will be able to get this sugar anymore, if borders will tighten so austerely that she will lose some of her most precious, treasured ingredients: the best dried lavender and mascarpone, pomegranate molasses. But in the scheme of things, does it matter? She comes upon her collection of vinegars, which she uses to brighten the character of certain cakes, to hold the line between sweet and cloying. She takes down a spicy vinegar she bought at a nearby farm; inside the bottle, purple peppers, like sleeping bats, hang from the surface of the liquid. Greenie used it in a dark chocolate ice cream and molasses pie.

All of this could fall flat, feel too much like a caricature of a Sicilian trattoria, if the food itself weren't so damn good: arancini, saffron-scented rice fried into crunchy, greaseless golf balls; polpette di pesce spada, swordfish meatballs with a taste so deep and savory they might as well be made of dry-aged beef; and a superlative version of caponata di melanzane, that ubiquitous Sicilian starter of eggplant, capers, and various other vegetation, stewed into a sweet and savory jam that you will want to smear on everything. Everything around you screams Italy, but those flavors on the end of the fork? The sweet-and-sour tandem, the stain of saffron, the grains of rice: pure Africa. The pasta: even better. Chewy noodles tinted jet black with squid ink and tossed with sautéed rings and crispy legs of calamari- a sort of nose-to-tail homage to the island's cherished cephalopod. And Palermo's most famous dish, pasta con le sarde, a bulge of thick spaghetti strewn with wild fennel, capers, raisins, and, most critically, a half dozen plump sardines slow cooked until they melt into a briny ocean ragù. Sweet, salty, fatty, funky- Palermo in a single bite.

I sliced the chicken with my fingers and put it into a small skillet to warm, separate a couple of eggs, and whisk the yolks quickly until they have lightened and thickened. Pour in a healthy glug of cream, then grate a flurry of cheese over the top, mixing it in. I zest a lemon from the bowl into the mix, and then squeeze in the juice. Some salt and pepper. I go over to the pots in my window and, with the scissors I keep there, snip off some parsley and chives, which I chop roughly and add to the mix. When the pasta is al dente, I drain it quickly, reserving a bit of the cooking water, and add it to a large bowl with a knob of butter, mixing quickly to coat the pasta. I add in the lemon sauce, tossing with a pair of tongs. When the whole mass comes together in a slick velvet tumble of noodles, I taste for seasoning, add a bit more ground black pepper, and put the shredded chicken on top with a bit more grated cheese. A fork and a cold beer out of the fridge, and I take the bowl out to the living room, tossing Simca a piece of chicken, and settle on the couch to watch TV, twirling long strands of the creamy lemony pasta onto my fork with pieces of the savory chicken, complete comfort food.

Load the sailboat with bottles of white wine, olive oil, fishing rods, and yeasty, dark-crusted bread. Work your way carefully out of the narrow channels of the Cabras port on the western shore of Sardinia. Set sail for the open seas. Navigate carefully around the archipelago of small boats fishing for sea bass, bream, squid. Steer clear of the lines of mussel nets swooping in long black arcs off the coastline. When you spot the crumbling stone tower, turn the boat north and nuzzle it gently into the electric blue-green waters along ancient Tharros. Drop anchor. Strip down to your bathing suit. Load into the transport boat and head for shore. After a swim, make for the highest point on the peninsula, the one with the view of land and sea and history that will make your knees buckle. Stay focused. You're not here to admire the sun-baked ruins of one of Sardinia's oldest civilizations, a five-thousand-year-old settlement that wears the footprints of its inhabitants- Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans- like the layers of a cake. You're here to pick herbs growing wildly among the ancient tombs and temples, under shards of broken vases once holding humans' earliest attempts at inebriation. Taste this! Like peppermint, but spicy. And this! A version of wild lemon thyme, perfect with seafood. Pluck a handful of finocchio marino,sea fennel, a bright burst of anise with an undertow of salt. With finocchio in fist, reboard the transport vessel and navigate toward the closest buoy. Grab the bright orange plastic, roll it over, and scrape off the thicket of mussels growing beneath. Repeat with the other buoys until you have enough mussels to fill a pot. In the belly of the boat, bring the dish together: Scrub the mussels. Bring a pot of seawater to a raucous boil and drop in the spaghetti- cento grammi a testa. While the pasta cooks, blanch a few handfuls of the wild fennel to take away some of the sting. Remove the mussels from their shells and combine with sliced garlic, a glass of seawater, and a deluge of peppery local olive oil in a pan. Take the pasta constantly, checking for doneness. (Don't you dare overcook it!) When only the faintest resistance remains in the middle, drain and add to the pan of mussels. Move the pasta fast and frequently with a pair of tongs, emulsifying the water and mussel juice with the oil. Keep stirring and drizzling in oil until a glistening sheen forms on the surface of the pasta. This is called la mantecatura, the key to all great seafood pastas, so take the time to do it right.

I take a cue from the list I made on my first night here alone and make soup. I chop vegetables and boil pasta, pour a carton of chicken stock into a pot. Once I’ve combined all the ingredients and it’s time to wait while they cook, I turn to the second essay in the solitude book, but my mind is too full of different versions of the last summer’s story. There’s one where I fail him. Where I stop coming home so he stops making dinner, and I’m not around to see how much he needs me. And then there’s one where he fails me. Where I feel it—that he doesn’t want me there, that I’m in the way. So I stay away, for him and for me. So that I never face his rejection. So that I get to pretend I’m the most important thing to him, the way he is to me. Because if we have any sense of self-preservation, we do the best with what we’re given. I was given cakes and cookies and rides to school. I was given songs and dinners at a table with brass candlesticks. I was given a man with a sensitive heart and a devious sense of humor and enough skill at cards to win me a year of private college—tuition and room and board—and I took all of those good things and told myself they made us special. Told myself they meant we were a family the way Mabel and Ana and Javier were, told myself that we weren’t missing anything. We were masters of collusion, Gramps and I. In that, at least, we were together.

(1 = best, 11 = worst) 1. Raw fruits and vegetables (preferably organic) such as apples, grapes, melons, bananas, avocados, romaine lettuce, cucumbers, carrots, kale, tomatoes, etc.; raw honey, stevia (a natural sweetener) 2. Lightly-steamed, low-starch vegetables (all vegetables other than white potatoes, acorn and butternut squash, and pumpkin); pure maple syrup, agave nectar *Note that corn and legumes are starches, not vegetables. 3. Organic raw nuts and seeds (almonds, pine nuts, walnuts, macadamia nuts, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, etc.) 4. Raw stone-pressed or cold-pressed plant oils (especially olive oil, though hemp seed and flax seed oils are also acceptable) 5. Cooked starchy vegetables (sweet potatoes, butternut and acorn squash, pumpkin, etc.) 6. Raw unpasteurized dairy products (particularly from goats and sheep) 7. Whole grains (brown rice, millet, whole wheat, buckwheat, etc.) 8. Pasteurized dairy and animal flesh (preferably limited to organic fish and minimal organic meat and poultry products) 9. All non-whole grain flour products (white bread, white rice, white pasta, white pizza dough, flour tortillas, etc.); sugar (white sugar, brown sugar, corn syrup, etc.) 10. Cooked animal fats/hydrogenated oils (lard, cooked oils, etc.), mainstream meats, poultry; soy products 11. Chemicals, artificial coloring and sweeteners (aspartame, saccharine, unnatural additives of all kinds)

He chopped a garlic, set a pot of water to boil on the stove, and poured a healthy amount of kosher salt into it. He threw the garlic in a pan of olive oil and let it sizzle for just a minute before taking it off the heat. The smell began to relax all of them and Gretchen and Jane settled themselves at his counter and watched him cook. He poured them both large glasses of red wine and watched as their bodies physically relaxed. He could see the tightness in Jane's jaw go away and he smiled. It was hard to feel bad about the world when the air smelled like garlic, when pasta and cheese were being prepared, when you had a good glass of red. Sautéed garlic could save the world. "I call this my bad day pasta," he told them. "It's a carbonara-cacio e pepe hybrid. Tons of cheese and salt and pepper." He cut off two slices of Parmesan and handed one to each of them. He knew the crunchy crystals and salt would go great with the wine. He whisked the egg and stirred in the cheese. He reserved some pasta water. He cranked his pepper mill. He swirled the pasta into a warm bowl as he added the egg mixture until it was shiny and coated. Jane took a sip of her wine and watched Teddy. "Mike doesn't eat pasta," she said. Teddy took three shallow bowls out of his cabinet and set them on the table. He distributed the pasta among them, sprinkled them with extra cheese and pepper. "Anyone who doesn't eat pasta is suspect in my book," he said. "Amen," Gretchen said.

Domenico, my pen pal and the master of ceremonies, emerges from the kitchen in a cobalt suit bearing a plate of bite-sized snacks: ricotta caramel, smoked hake, baby artichoke with shaved bottarga. The first course lands on the table with a wink from Domenico: raw shrimp, raw sheep, and a shower of wild herbs and flowers- an edible landscape of the island. I raise my fork tentatively, expecting the intensity of a mountain flock, but the sheep is amazingly delicate- somehow lighter than the tiny shrimp beside it. The intensity arrives with the next dish, the calf's liver we bought at the market, transformed from a dense purple lobe into an orb of pâté, coated in crushed hazelnuts, surrounded by fruit from the market this morning. The boneless sea anemones come cloaked in crispy semolina and bobbing atop a sticky potato-parsley puree. Bread is fundamental to the island, and S'Apposentu's frequent carb deliveries prove the point: a hulking basket overflowing with half a dozen housemade varieties from thin, crispy breadsticks to a dense sourdough loaf encased in a dark, gently bitter crust. The last savory course, one of Roberto's signature dishes, is the most stunning of all: ravioli stuffed with suckling pig and bathed in a pecorino fondue. This is modernist cooking at its most magnificent: two fundamental flavors of the island (spit-roasted pig and sheep's-milk cheese) cooked down and refined into a few explosive bites. The kind of dish you build a career on.

Despite the raised voices and the wild gesticulations, nobody here is wrong. The beauty of ragù is that it's an idea as much as it is a recipe, a slow-simmered distillation of what means and circumstances have gifted you: If Zia Peppe's ragù is made with nothing but pork scraps, that's because her neighbor raises pigs. When Maria cooks her vegetables in a mix of oil and butter, it's because her family comes from a long line of dairy farmers. When Nonna Anna slips a few laurel leaves into the pot, she plucks them from the tree outside her back door. There is no need for a decree from the Chamber of Commerce to tell these women what qualifies as the authentic ragù; what's authentic is whatever is simmering under the lid. Eventually the women agree to disagree and the rolling boil of the debate calms to a gentle simmer. Alessandro opens a few bottles of pignoletto he's brought to make the peace. We drink and take photos and make small talk about tangential ragù issues such as the proper age of Parmesan and the troubled state of the prosciutto industry in the region. On my way out, Anna no. 1 grabs me by the arm. She pulls me close and looks up into my eyes with an earnestness that drowns out the rest of the chatter in the room. "Forget about these arguments. Forget about the small details. Just remember that the most important ingredient for making ragù, the one thing you can never forget, is love." Lisetta overhears from across the room and quickly adds, "And pancetta!

Pasta with Garlic Scapes and Fresh Tomatoes In Italy, you can find a garden anywhere there is a patch of soil, and in many areas, the growing season is nearly year round. It’s common to find an abundant tomato vine twining up the wall near someone’s front stoop, or a collection of herbs and greens adorning a window box. Other staples of an Italian kitchen garden include aubergine, summer squash varieties and peppers of all sorts. Perhaps that’s why the best dishes are so very simple. Gather the fresh ingredients from your garden or local farmers’ market, toss everything together with some hot pasta and serve. In the early summer and mid-autumn, look for garlic scapes, prized for their mild flavor and slight sweetness. Scapes are the willowy green stems and unopened flower buds of hardneck garlic varieties. Roasting garlic scapes with tomatoes and red onion brings out their sweet, rich flavor for a delightful summer meal. 2 swirls of olive oil 10 garlic scapes 1 pint multicolored cherry tomatoes 1 red onion, thinly sliced Sea salt and red pepper flakes, to taste ½ lb. pasta—fettuccine, tubini or spaghetti are good choices 1 cup baby spinach, arugula or fresh basil leaves, or a combination 1 lemon, zested and juiced Toasted pine nuts for garnish Heat oven to 400 ° F. Toss together olive oil, garlic scapes, tomatoes, onion, salt and pepper flakes and spread in an even layer on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Roast for 12–15 minutes, until tomatoes are just beginning to burst. If you have other garden vegetables, such as peppers, zucchini or aubergine, feel free to add that. Meanwhile, cook pasta according to package directions. Toss everything together with the greens, lemon zest and juice. Garnish with pine nuts. Serve immediately with a nice Barolo wine.

Hey beautiful,” Trey answers, sounding exhausted. “Hey you.” My heart clenches in my chest from the sound of his voice. He breathes heavily. “I’m sitting here, shirt off, beer in hand, TV on, and I feel so fucking empty.” The image of him lying on the couch we bought together, his beautiful body stretched out across the cushions, makes me ache in places I haven’t ached in a long time. I want him so bad. “I’m missing my girl tucked against my chest.” “I would give anything to be there right now,” I answer honestly. Sighing, he asks, “Remember that piece of spaghetti I threw on the ceiling the night before you left?” “Yeah.” I smile to myself, thinking about that night. Trey insisted upon making spaghetti and meatballs for me. He came home with a grocery bag full of pasta, spaghetti sauce, and pre-made meatballs. When cooking the noodles, he told me an “old wives’ tale.” He said if you throw the noodles to the ceiling and it sticks, then the pasta is done. What he didn’t realize is if that pasta never comes down, you overcooked it. “It fell this morning. Scared the shit out of me. I thought it was a spider trying to bury itself in my hair while I was making eggs.” A laugh bursts out of me as I think about Trey bouncing around the apartment, spaghetti in hair thinking it was a spider. “Oh no. Miss Pasta-relli finally fell?” “She did and that squirrely bitch knew exactly what she was doing, too. Trying to scare the crap right out of me.” “Seems like she did.” I chuckle. “But I got the last laugh when I turned the trash compactor on. Her little pasta self squiggled down the drain. Revenge never felt so sweet.” Still laughing, I shake my head. “Is this what your life has come to? Fighting with old, overcooked pasta?” “I’m telling you, Amelia, with you gone, I’ve lost my damn mind.” “Sounds like it

The only point that everyone I spoke with in Rome agrees upon is that Armando al Pantheon is one of the city's last true trattorie. Given the location, Claudio and his family could have gone the way of the rest of the neighborhood a long time ago and mailed it in with a handful of fresh mozzarella and prosciutto. But he's chosen the opposite path, an unwavering dedication to the details- the extra steps that make the oxtail more succulent, the pasta more perfectly toothsome, the artichokes and favas and squash blossoms more poetic in their expression of the Roman seasons. "I experiment in my own small ways. I want to make something new, but I also want my guests to think of their mothers and grandmothers. I want them to taste their infancy, to taste their memories. Like that great scene in Ratatouille." I didn't grow up on amatriciana and offal, but when I eat them here, they taste like a memory I never knew I had. I keep coming back. For the cacio e pepe, which sings that salty-spicy duet with unrivaled clarity, thanks to the depth charge of toasted Malaysian peppercorns Claudio employs. For his coda alla vaccinara, as Roman as the Colosseum, a masterpiece of quinto quarto cookery: the oxtail cooked to the point of collapse, bathed in a tomato sauce with a gentle green undertow of celery, one of Rome's unsung heroes. For the vegetables: one day a crostini of stewed favas and pork cheek, the next a tumble of bitter puntarelle greens bound in a bracing anchovy vinaigrette. And always the artichokes. If Roman artichokes are drugs, Claudio's are pure poppy, a vegetable so deeply addictive that I find myself thinking about it at the most inappropriate times. Whether fried into a crisp, juicy flower or braised into tender, melting submission, it makes you wonder what the rest of the world is doing with their thistles.

Pizzoccheri — SERVES 4 TO 6 — 1 medium Savoy cabbage A big, sexy slab of Valtellina cheese, or something similar, like fontina 3 large yellow potatoes A fuck of a lot of butter 4 large garlic cloves 1 pound pizzoccheri Extra-virgin olive oil 2 handfuls grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, or Bitto (if available and you can afford it) Salt Remove and discard any tough outer leaves from the cabbage and roughly chop it into long pieces. Thinly cut about 15 pieces of Valtellina cheese and also grate about 3 cups. Set aside. Preheat the oven to 325°F. Peel and dice the potatoes and boil until cooked but still firm, about 15 minutes or so. Halfway through boiling, add the cabbage to the potatoes. When the potatoes and cabbage are cooked, drain them and set them aside. In a large, deep frying pan over low heat, melt the fuckload of butter. Gently crush (if that’s even possible) the garlic cloves, place them in the pan, and cook until they soften and the butter has melted but not turned brown. Boil the pizzoccheri until al dente and drain, reserving about 2 cups of the water. Return the pizzoccheri to the pot and drizzle them with a little olive oil or some butter so they don’t stick together. Pour a little of the garlic butter into a baking dish and begin to layer the ingredients, starting with the pizzoccheri, then the cabbage, then the potatoes, then both cheeses, drizzling more garlic butter over the whole mixture after each layer, adding a bit of the reserved pasta water to ensure it doesn’t get too thick but making sure it doesn’t get too watery. You may need only a cup. Top the final layer with a drizzle of olive oil and more grated cheese. Cover with foil and bake for about 15 minutes or so. Remove the foil and return to the oven until the top has a slight crisp. Salt to taste. Serve it and eat it and drink a lot of wine with it and think about how much you deserve it after you burned off so many

I look over the recipe again. It sounds very simple. You boil some rice in water like pasta, I can do that. You cook some onion in butter, stir in the rice, pop it in the oven. Add some cream and grated cheese and mix it up. And voila! A real dinner. I pull out a couple of the pots Caroline gave me, and began to get everything laid out. Grant always yammered on about mise en place, that habit of getting all your stuff together before you start cooking so you can be organized. It seems to make sense, and appeals to the part of me that likes to make lists and check things off of them. I manage to chop a pile of onions without cutting myself, but with a lot of tears. At one point I walk over to the huge freezer and stick my head in it for some relief, while Schatzi looks at me like I'm an idiot. Which isn't unusual. Or even come to think of it, wrong. But I get them sliced and chopped, albeit unevenly, and put them in the large pot with some butter. I get some water boiling in the other pot and put in some rice. I cook it for a few minutes, drain it, and add it to the onions, stirring them all together. Then I put the lid on the pot and put it in the oven, and set my phone with an alarm for thirty-five minutes. The kitchen smells amazing. Nothing quite like onions cooked in butter to make the heart happy. While it cooks, I grab a beer, and grate some Swiss cheese into a pile. When my phone buzzes, I pull the pot out of the oven and put it back on the stovetop, stirring in the cream and cheese, and sprinkling in some salt and pepper. I grab a bowl and fill it with the richly scented mixture. I stand right there at the counter, and gingerly take a spoonful. It's amazing. Rich and creamy and oniony. The rice is nicely cooked, not mushy. And even though some of my badly cut onions make for some awkward eating moments, as the strings slide out of the spoon and attach themselves to my chin, the flavor is spectacular. Simple and comforting, and utterly delicious.

Carbonara: The union of al dente noodles (traditionally spaghetti, but in this case rigatoni), crispy pork, and a cloak of lightly cooked egg and cheese is arguably the second most famous pasta in Italy, after Bologna's tagliatelle al ragù. The key to an excellent carbonara lies in the strategic incorporation of the egg, which is added raw to the hot pasta just before serving: add it when the pasta is too hot, and it will scramble and clump around the noodles; add it too late, and you'll have a viscous tide of raw egg dragging down your pasta. Cacio e pepe: Said to have originated as a means of sustenance for shepherds on the road, who could bear to carry dried pasta, a hunk of cheese, and black pepper but little else. Cacio e pepe is the most magical and befuddling of all Italian dishes, something that reads like arithmetic on paper but plays out like calculus in the pan. With nothing more than these three ingredients (and perhaps a bit of oil or butter, depending on who's cooking), plus a splash of water and a lot of movement in the pan to emulsify the fat from the cheese with the H2O, you end up with a sauce that clings to the noodles and to your taste memories in equal measure. Amatriciana: The only red pasta of the bunch. It doesn't come from Rome at all but from the town of Amatrice on the border of Lazio and Abruzzo (the influence of neighboring Abruzzo on Roman cuisine, especially in the pasta department, cannot be overstated). It's made predominantly with bucatini- thick, tubular spaghetti- dressed in tomato sauce revved up with crispy guanciale and a touch of chili. It's funky and sweet, with a mild bite- a rare study of opposing flavors in a cuisine that doesn't typically go for contrasts. Gricia: The least known of the four kings, especially outside Rome, but according to Andrea, gricia is the bridge between them all: the rendered pork fat that gooses a carbonara or amatriciana, the funky cheese and pepper punch at the heart of cacio e pepe. "It all starts with gricia.

It's basty!" "There's definitely a soup underneath the crust. I see carrots. Gingko nuts. Mushrooms. And... Shark fin! Simmered until it's falling apart!" Aah! It's all too much! I-I don't care if I burn my mouth... I want to dive in right now! Mm! Mmmm! UWAAAAH! "Incredible! The shark fin melts into a soft wave of warm umami goodness on the tongue... ...with the crispy piecrust providing a delectably crunchy contrast!" "Mmm... this piecrust shows all the signs of the swordsmanship he stole from Eishi Tsukasa too." Instead of melting warm butter to mix into the flour, he grated cold butter into granules and blended them... ... to form small lumps that then became airy layers during the baking, making the crust crispier and lighter. A light, airy crust like that soaks up the broth, making it the perfect complement to this dish! "Judge Ohizumi, what's that "basty" thing you were talking about?" "It's a dish in a certain style of cooking that's preserved for centuries in Nagasaki- Shippoku cuisine." "Shippoku cuisine?" Centuries ago, when Japan was still closed off from the rest of the world, only the island of Dejima in Nagasaki was permitted to trade with the West. There, a new style of cooking that fused Japanese, Chinese and Western foods was born- Shippoku cuisine! One of its signature dishes is Basty, which is a soup covered with a lattice piecrust. *It's widely assumed that Basty originated from the Portuguese word "Pasta."* "Shippoku cuisine is already a hybrid of many vastly different cooking styles, making it a perfect choice for this theme!" "The lattice piecrust is French. Under it is a wonderfully savory Chinese shark fin soup. And the soup's rich chicken broth and the vegetables in it have all been thoroughly infused with powerfully aromatic spices... ... using distinctively Indian spice blends and techniques!" "Hm? Wait a minute. There's more than just shark fin and vegetables in this soup. This looks just like an Italian ravioli! I wonder what's in it? ?!" "Holy crap, look at it stretch!" "What is that?! Mozzarella?! A mochi pouch?!" "Nope! Neither! That's Dondurma. Or as some people call it... ... Turkish ice cream. A major ingredient in Dondurma is salep, a flour made from the root of certain orchids. It gives the dish a thick, sticky texture. The moist chewiness of ravioli pasta melds together with the sticky gumminess of the Dondurma... ... making for an addictively thick and chewy texture!

Spaghetti alla puttanesca is typically made with tomatoes, olives, anchovies, capers, and garlic. It means, literally, "spaghetti in the style of a prostitute." It is a sloppy dish, the tomatoes and oil making the spaghetti lubricated and slippery. It is the sort of sauce that demands you slurp the noodles Goodfellas style, staining your cheeks with flecks of orange and red. It is very salty and very tangy and altogether very strong; after a small plate, you feel like you've had a visceral and significant experience. There are varying accounts as to when and how the dish originated- but the most likely explanation is that it became popular in the mid-twentieth century. The first documented mention of it is in Raffaele La Capria's 1961 novel, Ferito a Morte. According to the Italian Pasta Makers Union, spaghetti alla puttanesca was a very popular dish throughout the sixties, but its exact genesis is not quite known. Sandro Petti, a famous Napoli chef and co-owner of Ischian restaurant Rangio Fellone, claims to be its creator. Near closing time one evening, a group of customers sat at one of his tables and demanded to be served a meal. Running low on ingredients, Petti told them he didn't have enough to make anything, but they insisted. They were tired, and they were hungry, and they wanted pasta. "Facci una puttanata qualsiasi!" they cried. "Make any kind of garbage!" The late-night eater is not usually the most discerning. Petti raided the kitchen, finding four tomatoes, two olives, and a jar of capers, the base of the now-famous spaghetti dish; he included it on his menu the next day under the name spaghetti alla puttanesca. Others have their own origin myths. But the most common theory is that it was a quick, satisfying dish that the working girls of Naples could knock up with just a few key ingredients found at the back of the fridge- after a long and unforgiving night. As with all dishes containing tomatoes, there are lots of variations in technique. Some use a combination of tinned and fresh tomatoes, while others opt for a squirt of puree. Some require specifically cherry or plum tomatoes, while others go for a smooth, premade pasta. Many suggest that a teaspoon of sugar will "open up the flavor," though that has never really worked for me. I prefer fresh, chopped, and very ripe, cooked for a really long time. Tomatoes always take longer to cook than you think they will- I rarely go for anything less than an hour. This will make the sauce stronger, thicker, and less watery. Most recipes include onions, but I prefer to infuse the oil with onions, frying them until brown, then chucking them out. I like a little kick in most things, but especially in pasta, so I usually go for a generous dousing of chili flakes. I crush three or four cloves of garlic into the oil, then add any extras. The classic is olives, anchovies, and capers, though sometimes I add a handful of fresh spinach, which nicely soaks up any excess water- and the strange, metallic taste of cooked spinach adds an interesting extra dimension. The sauce is naturally quite salty, but I like to add a pinch of sea or Himalayan salt, too, which gives it a slightly more buttery taste, as opposed to the sharp, acrid salt of olives and anchovies. I once made this for a vegetarian friend, substituting braised tofu for anchovies. Usually a solid fish replacement, braised tofu is more like tuna than anchovy, so it was a mistake for puttanesca. It gave the dish an unpleasant solidity and heft. You want a fish that slips and melts into the pasta, not one that dominates it. In terms of garnishing, I go for dried oregano or fresh basil (never fresh oregano or dried basil) and a modest sprinkle of cheese. Oh, and I always use spaghetti. Not fettuccine. Not penne. Not farfalle. Not rigatoni. Not even linguine. Always spaghetti.

Foreign locations often presented problems to the caterers. The British crews rarely ate any local foods ‘Call this proper food?’ you’d hear the cry go up, ‘We want steak pudding, sausage and mash and treacle sponge with custard.’There was one day when something went wrong in Egypt and word reached us mid-morning that there wouldn’t be any lunch. Cubby knew he’d have a revolt on his hands, and so – somehow – gathered together huge great cooking pots, bundles of pasta and meat, and made a wonderful pasta with meatballs and sauce. He served it up to the boys and girls himself too. Cubby liked nothing better than to cook, and the crew liked nothing better than to eat. You can see why everyone loved Cubby so much – and he was ‘Cubby’ to everyone. There was no ‘Mr Broccoli’ on his set.

The sun rose at 7 A.M. each day, and that’s when the SpaceX team got to work. A series of meetings would take place with people listing what needed to get done, and debating solutions to lingering problems. As the large structures arrived, the workers placed the body of the rocket horizontally in a makeshift hangar and spent hours melding together all of its parts. “There was always something to do,” Hollman said. “If the engine wasn’t a problem, then there was an avionics problem or a software problem.” By 7 P.M., the engineers wound down their work. “One or two people would decide it was their night to cook, and they would make steak and potatoes and pasta,” Hollman said. “We had a bunch of movies and a DVD player, and some of us did a lot of fishing off the docks.” For many of the engineers, this was both a torturous and magical experience. “At Boeing you could be comfortable, but that wasn’t going to happen at SpaceX,” said Walter Sims, a SpaceX tech expert who found time to get certified to dive while on Kwaj. “Every person on that island was a fucking star, and they were always holding seminars on radios or the engine. It was such an invigorating place.

My mother had just finished kneading a large mass of pasta dough and was patting it into a nice round ball before putting it aside to rest. That meant ravioli. We always began Sunday dinner with either ravioli or lasagne. The homemade pasta meant ravioli, because we buy the large sheets of dough for lasagne from Constantino's. Sitting on the stove, waiting for the oven to get up to temperature, was a roasting pan holding a large pork roast studded with garlic, glistening with olive oil, and surrounded by rosemary sprigs.

Take the guesswork and measuring out of cooking whole grains such as barley, rice, farro, and quinoa by boiling them as you would pasta, until they are completely tender. Drain and serve as a side dish, or spread them out to let them cool, then drizzle with olive oil and add them to soups, grain salads, or store them in the freezer for up to two months for future use.

Ninety percent of a cooked egg is digested whereas only 65 percent of a raw egg is; by the same token, the rarer the steak, or more al dente the pasta, the less of it will be absorbed. Dieters take note.

We've been knocking out the basics all morning.... Asian chicken salad, fruit medley with mint, wheat berry pilaf with dried cherries and almonds. Kai roasted six chickens and a turkey breast, and grilled a whole flank steak, which he sliced thin across the grain. We have green beans in a spicy garlic marinade, braised black kale with smoked turkey, and roasted brussels sprouts. Our signature Morning Energy muffins, bursting with golden raisins and walnuts, sunflower seeds, millet, flax, and sweet with honey are cooling on a rack. We have thawed today's soup specials, which we cook over the weekends and freeze for the week, a golden butternut squash, smooth as velvet, and a chunky pasta fagioli, with whole wheat pasta, white beans, and loads of veggies.

She hadn't had a bite of her dinner. I'd even curled the pasta into a little linguine nest in the center of each bowl. My mother's was still perfect and round and cold. The sauce had darkened. "This is delish," she said. "But it needs red wine. I tell you because I love you and you should know for the future." She went on about deglazing and how it brings out the earthy taste of the onions and never use wine you wouldn't drink yourself and a young, robust wine is what you use in red sauces, nothing fortified or dry, for example.

I realized boiling is called for only when cooking vegetables, grains, and pasta; reducing sauces; and hard-cooking eggs. I could bring everything else—and I mean everything—to a boil and then swiftly reduce it to a simmer to cook through, whether I was cooking over a live fire, on the stove, or in an oven. Since simmering water is gentler than boiling water, it won’t jostle delicate foods so much that they fall apart or agitate tougher foods so much that they overcook on the surface before cooking through completely. Beans. Braises. Paella. Jasmine Rice. Chicken Vindaloo. Pozole. Quinoa. Stews. Risotto. Chili. Béchamel sauce. Potato gratin. Tomato sauce. Chicken stock. Polenta. Oatmeal. Thai curry. It didn’t matter—this applied to everything cooked in liquid.

Give me thirty pounds of mussels, twenty-five of scampi, as much squid as you can get me, some whitefish, snapper, sea bass, and sardines- whatever you've got. That will get me through today, and when you get here I'll give you an order for the rest of the week." I'm too spent to repeat my outraged performance for Rob, the meat guy, because by now I know that neither he nor Eddie is to blame. But because we're great customers, Rob agrees to rush me over some sausage, a dozen pork tenderloins, and some flank steak, which I can cook quickly, for braciole. I instruct the prep cooks to roll out some lasagna noodles and to start preparing béchamel in large quantities. We will resort to a couple of baked pasta entrees, flavored with meat and sausage and, depending on what Eddie sends over, a cioppino.

Using a newspaper, sugar packets, and animated hand motions, Callegari reenacts the creation of the Trapizzino, a pocket of crispy dough that eats like the love child of pizza and tramezzino, Italy's triangular sandwich. Skeptics might see in the Trapizzino the sad pizza cone found on food trucks in the United States and beyond, but this is no half-hearted gimmick: crispy and tender, light but resilient, it is an architectural marvel of pizza ingenuity. Not content with traditional pizza toppings, Callegari instead ladles slow-cooked stews of meat and vegetables- tongue in salsa verde, pollo alla cacciatora, artichokes and favas with mint and chili- that perform magnificently against the crunch and comfort of this warm pizza pocket. "The best of old Roman cooking is like great ethnic food- slow-cooked, humble ingredients with big flavor.

You'll find trattorie brimming with the spirit of Sicily no matter which direction you head from the Four Corners. At Zia Pina, you will find no menu at all, just Pina and her helpers cooking up great piles of stuffed sardines, baby octopus, and fried red mullet. At Trattoria Basile, you take your ticket and build your meal piece by piece: a few stuffed eggplant, a plate of spaghetti and clams, maybe a bit of grilled sausage.

I think of them again now as I warm meatballs in sauce on the camp stove. This is Aunty Connie's recipe, using pork mince and pecorino. The simple tomato sauce is so cluttered with meatballs you could stand the spoon up in the bowl. Aunty Connie's theory is that meat should be included in every meal to help children grow, and whenever we visited her as kids we came home with our stomachs at bursting point. She makes beautiful veal dishes, such huge piles of pasta they threaten to break the serving dishes, prosciutto sliced thin as lace so you can see through it, and polpette. Meatballs, meatballs, meatballs. I flick off the camp stove. The pot sends up curls of steam and the scent of pork and fennel and tomatoes simmered till sweet. I breathe it in, pushing cannoli, cassata, and cookie fantasies to one side.

After a couple of days, James spotted something strange about the food they were eating. "It's an odd thing," he remarked to Jumbo, "but every single meal seems to contain at least one dish that's red, green and white. Yesterday it was that wonderful salad- tomatoes, basil and that white mozzarella stuff. Today it was some sort of herby green paste on white pasta, with tomatoes on the side." Jumbo screwed up his face. "What's so odd about that?" "They're the colors of the Italian flag." "So they are." Jumbo thought some more. "Probably a coincidence, though. After all, they eat a lot of tomatoes, so the red's there from the start." "Probably," James agreed. But later that afternoon he made an excuse to drop by the kitchen, and peer over Livia's shoulder at what she was preparing for dinner. "What are these?" he asked casually. "Pomodori ripieni con formaggio caprino ed erba cipollina," she said tersely. "Tomatoes stuffed with goat's cheese and chives." Ignoring the fact that his mouth was watering, he said, "They're the same colors as your flag." Livia affected to notice this for the first time. "So they are. How strange." "As one of the dishes at lunch. In fact, every meal you've cooked us has had something similar.

If Alessandro and Rosy are working from a disadvantage in terms of product recognition, they have put generations of accumulated experience into practice to fill the menu with dozens of little tastes of Como. They make fragrant, full-flavored stocks from the bones and bodies of perch and chub. They cure whitefish eggs in salt, creating a sort of freshwater bottarga, ready to be grated over pasta and rice. Shad is brined in vinegar and herbs, whitefish becomes a slow-cooked ragù or a filling for ravioli, and pigo and pike form the basis of Mella's polpettine di pesce, Pickled, dried, smoked, cured, pâtéd: a battery of techniques to ensure that nothing goes to waste. If you can make it with meat, there's a good chance Alessandro and Rosy have made it with lake fish. And then there's missoltino, the lake's most important by-product, a staple that stretches back to medieval times and has been named a presidio by Slow Food, a designation reserved for the country's most important ingredients and food traditions. The people still making missoltino can be counted on a single hand. Alessandro guts and scales hundreds of shad at a time, salts the bodies, and hangs them like laundry to dry under the sun for forty-eight hours or more. The dried fish are then layered with bay leaves, packed into metal canisters, and weighed down. Slowly the natural oils from the shad escape and bubble to the surface, forming a protective layer that preserves the missoltino indefinitely. It can be used as a condiment of sorts, a weapons-grade dose of lake umami to be detonated in salads and pastas. In its most classic preparation, served with toc, a thick, rich scoop of polenta slow cooked in a copper pot over a wood fire, it tastes of nothing you've eaten in Italy- or anywhere else.

We'll be in Parma, Bologna, Florence, Ravenna, and the hills of Chianti with our own 'Morning in America' chef, Casey Costello, who will cook in the kitchens with real Italians. We'll show you how true parmigiano-reggiano is made and see the fat pigs that give us Parma ham. You'll learn how to cook a Tuscan steak the size of a cow, make a real Bolognese sauce, pasta the Italian way"- she leaned forward and gave the camera a coquettish twinkle- "and what to do with a squiggling eel." Who could resist?

I adore macaroni and cheese. Whenever I see it on a menu at a restaurant, I have to order it. I’ve had (and consequently made) fried mac and cheese balls, lobster mac and cheese, truffle mac and cheese, quattro formaggi mac and cheese, and Kraft mac and cheese. Now, don’t get me wrong—all of the fancy macaroni and cheese dishes have been delectable and enjoyable, but at home, I like a simple, delicious mac and cheese. So here’s my recipe. This dish is best when served during a game or movie night with family and friends. Serves 8 to 10 8 ounces (225 g) elbow macaroni 1½ cups Velveeta cheese (about 7 ounces/190g), cut into ½-inch cubes 2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon all-purpose flour 1½ teaspoons kosher salt 1½ teaspoons dry mustard ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg ⅛ teaspoon cayenne pepper ⅔ cup (165 ml) sour cream 2 large eggs, lightly beaten 1½ cups (360 ml) half-and-half 1½ cups (360 ml) heavy cream ⅓ cup (55 g) grated onion 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce 2 cups grated sharp Cheddar cheese (about 8 ounces/230g) • Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Grease a 9-by-13-inch (23-by-33-cm) baking dish. Bring a 4-quart (3.8-L) saucepan of salted water to a boil. Add the pasta and cook it halfway through, about 3 minutes. Drain the pasta and transfer it to the baking dish. Stir in the cubed Velveeta. • Combine the flour, salt, mustard, black pepper, nutmeg, and cayenne in a large mixing bowl. Add the sour cream and eggs and whisk until smooth. Whisk in the half-and-half, cream, onion, Worcestershire sauce, and a sprinkle of black pepper. Pour the egg mixture over the pasta mixture in the prepared baking dish and stir to combine. Sprinkle the Cheddar cheese evenly over the surface. Bake until the pasta mixture is set around the edges but still a bit loose in the center, about 30 minutes. Let it cool for 10 minutes before serving.

I love cooking. I cook for myself every day. I like the ceremony of it. It takes me into a different zone. I make a lot of pasta. But cooking for a crowd of five or ten or, heaven forbid, twenty? No, thank you. I don’t like feeling like a slave to the care and feeding of my guests.

I could definitely rise to the challenge of re-inventing comfort food. Neufchatel and low-fat sour cream were my friends! Low-carb pasta with omega-3s and protein were the greatest inventions ever! I'd had luck using all of them. Granted, even though I couldn't resist a good fatty slice of prime rib every now and then, and Fromager d'Affinois bursting into cream in my mouth was like heaven for me- and certainly I had the curves to show for it- but even if I didn't follow a strict diet, I could certainly cook one!

Gnocchi So, the recipe for gnocchi: A little over 1 pound of potatoes suitable for mashing; red potatoes are an option as well. Don’t peel them, so no excess moisture infiltrates the potatoes. Cook them in water with salt until they’re soft but not too soft. Halve and mash with a potato masher. Remove the peel from the masher after each potato. Add flour to the mashed potatoes. This can’t be quantified; add as much as goes in—it depends on the potato, on the degree to which it was cooked, on the moisture in the potato, and on the flour itself. In any case, the mashed potatoes must be warm. Stir until a warm, pleasant dough forms. Coat your hands with flour and form snakes with a diameter of about 1 centimeter (or nearly ½ an inch)—different from the semolina gnocchi rolls. Cut every roll into little pieces, almost 1 inch long—usually each piece should be closer to ½ an inch, but Aviram was afraid that would be too much work for me. Place the gnocchi on a floured tray, leaving some space around each one. Here, too, he spared me some work; I didn’t transfer each gnocco with a fork in order to create slits that would enhance cooking and soaking in the sauce. Drop the gnocchi in several batches, depending on quantity, into a large pot (I didn’t buy one; Michal loaned me a pot on the day of the dress rehearsal) full of water with salt, as when preparing pasta; use 1 tablespoon of salt per 4 cups of water or so, over a large flame. Once the gnocchi float, remove them with a skimmer into a serving bowl, pour the sauce that has been prepared in advance over them, and sprinkle parmesan. You can also prepare them slightly in advance and warm them in the oven.   ***

Some things should be so routine that they don’t even ask questions! Especially about eating!” I shrugged it off at the time, but I later began to wonder. Maybe Janine was right. I had encouraged my children to express their individual views, and to use their questions to dispute parental orders, allowing them to exert control where they could. One of the places where they did this, early on, was at the table. Meals at our house were usually rushed, as we were either herding the children out the door in the morning or rushed getting home after work. Hurried and harried, I’d usually accept the kids’ rejections of my cooking and meet their demands for substitutes. Bread and butter, or pasta, became our routine. My kids learned that they—not I—decided what to eat.