Original Sin - Pasta Caring

As anyone who has read a few of these posts will have gathered, I may not be hidebound, but I'm packing for the journey as it were. My preference has always been in food terms for the authentic, so what was a passing fad a few years back - fusion cuisine - didn't really work for me. Which is not to say that I won't try new things, or enjoy tweaks to recipes and dishes that don't rip the heart out of the original.


The trouble is that as we eat lighter and healthier meals, and with less meat than of yore, I end up looking for alternatives to the meat protein. Take pasta as an example, so often in the past accompanied by a rich Bolognese sauce - and nothing for me wrong with that; or meatballs with toothsome pork. Having tried and not enjoyed textured protein stuff, pretend mince, etc, and put it down to experience, I now go for something radically different to make the pasta interesting. Simple fresh tomatoes and olive oil for one; or a sauce made with mushrooms, including dried wild mushrooms, though I don't think they are a great combo with tinned toms so look to use them sweated down with maybe just onions, garlic and celery.


I can justify this to my (in culinary terms) conservative self by saying that Italian peasants until recent days are unlikely to have eaten much meat either, and you need something to make the spag or what have you more palatable. Which reminds me of an episode from my distant youth: on a campsite in Switzerland we had Italian neighbours who for most lunches and evening meals prepared a massive pan of spaghetti, that they seemed to eat with nothing on it, much to the surprise of my parents, who thought - it was the 1970s - that spag meant bol. They probably had olive oil and garlic, or maybe butter and cheese with it.


In the end if you can make things work well, what the hell? Arriving home hungry on Saturday we had linguine with tiny broad beans fresh picked from the garden, some equally young fennel, chopped fine and cooked briefly in butter, and a load of herbs including the fennel top, basil, parsley, tarragon and oregano. With a generous amount of Parmesan it was satisfying, had our B12, and most importantly, was absolutely delicious. My politics have tended to drift leftwards of late, and so maybe my culinary tendency towards the liberal instead of the absolute is not out of step with that.