How the enduring multifaceted bouche-pleasing flavour vehicle has imbued my life with joy.

Arriving in all shapes ‘n’ sizes: shells, spirals, small ones – large ones, tubes, dinosaurs, straws, dog paws hell even monster claws – you get the picture. Actually I’m not done. There’s stringy, that one that’s a little thick but a noodle lookin’ kinda thing, sheets, ones made with beats, chickpea pasta, lentil, pasta with your bento – I could go on. It’s the Swiss army knife of the sauce delivery vehicle world and so on, ad infinitum.

For all the renditions of pasta there are equally as many ways to utilise them. Then there’s the addition of memories, nostalgia, the array of flavours and the innumerable additions, even those deemed sacrilegious – yes I am aware that in Elf, Will Ferrel had dessert pasta, yes I have seen the Binging with Babish video and no it is truly as bad as it sounds. Yet despite every facet of its malleability, it is the simplicity of pasta that keeps me returning to it. Traipsing back to familiar territory in search of comfort or wielding it as a reliable incorporation for an abridge to new culinary grounds. The permanence of pasta in my life stems all the way back to my childhood, so I’d like to recall my first encounters with the array of durum wheat, chickpea, lentil – let’s not go over this again shall we?

The way I remember a weeknight pasta sauce was as such: two tins of chopped tomatoes, an obscene amount – in retrospect too much garlic, a jar of assorted mushroom antipasti and just about every vegetable my mum could retrieve from the tenebrous bowels of the fridge. It followed this formula to a T, as many dishes by parents do. Once it is established, permutations upon the formula are a mere frivolity. In our household of two, a meal must be transformed from mise en place to a state of edibility in a maximum of thirty minutes – any more and the prospect was discounted. Rarely was this sanctimonious rule broken; save for when a meal could be loaded into the oven and subsequently erased from thought until the ensuing fumes of charred goods began to permeate through to the living room. And indeed, though mum’s establishment of the pasta sauce was simple in nature, the flavour and delight it brought cemented it as a staple weekly dish, occurring on Mondays or Tuesdays. Landing somewhere between pizza and chilli nights. The wildest additions to the sauce materialised in the form of fresh basil and grated cheddar – both to be applied with equal generosity. Then as all good things so often do, it began to grow stale. Wherein my introduction to pesto became a much needed respite from the repetitious residue that began to sour the morning ruminations of Mondays or Tuesdays.

During a trip to Australia to visit family was where my initial introduction to chicken pesto pasta began. It was an insurmountable dish that was likely composed of 3 ingredients: chicken breast, jarred pesto and penne. Though the introductory sensation when coalesced with childhood nostalgia makes both my recapturing of and the quest to surmount this flavour – impossible. I even recall the very type of chair I was perched upon as I mechanically shovelled the pesto-smothered tubes of penne into my mouth. Black plastic, swivel chairs with a chrome finish, for those wondering. It was the simplicity of it which left me astonished. She (my auntie) had merely cracked open a jar and dolloped atop this paste of (to my child-like mind) indiscernible nature and fried some chicken. Yet this was the relief from the sanguine sauce my mum had been weaponising against me for some time now. The juxtaposition of my auntie’s chic Australian flat probably aided in this notion of relief, as looking back it was more a case of my mum making do with what little we had (though how was I to know). Though, sure enough with my enduring insistence on further attempts to replicate this momentous dish, mum had taken to alternating our pasta night. One week pesto, one week tomato. Let’s just say, I always knew when tomato week was due as cats in their thousands began to howl and the clouds above developed a perceptible inclemency about them. Or perhaps it was just a bit of projection?

In stark contrast to my mum’s patented formula, was my dads take on the sauce delivery venture. Often arriving in the form of unifying both a filled pasta (some form of tortellini, stuffed with various meats of unknown avian origins) with a fillet of fish or a store bought pizza. The main dish, be it the fish or whatever accompaniment chose to overshadow it this mealtime; all too frequently illuminated just how bland the average filled pasta was. Or worse, it detracted from the whole meal. The fish, ranging from tesco’s finest seabass to bird’s eye cod fillets, was the obvious highlight here, and in the mind of a child the mediocrity of pasta when placed before the omnipotent presence of pizza, found itself consigned to an afterthought. It was an all too common sight to see a nest of anatomised tortellini bobbing limply in the remaining sauce, as the crumbs from the pizza were hoovered up with voracious resolve. Though dad was not one to intentionally conceal the pasta’s might, he did make his own on a sparse few occasions. All of which I can’t truly recall yet I always remember it must have been delicious – yet I always wanted more. Luckily he never tried his hand at crafting a sauce – given the acrimonious nature of his tomato soup.

Throughout my teen years and on into university I found bouche-pleasing solace in the form of the enduring pasta bake. This time its iteration was simplified further – reduced to an approximation of the dish, one which best we could summon whilst operating under the fogged consciousness of a spliff-infused mind. I’ll spare you the recipe for this one but the procedure went as follows: a large dish, preferably clean (non-essential), a whole pack of whatever pasta came to hand (doesn’t have to originate from your food cupboard) along with a jar-full of Homepride pasta bake sauce, stirred into the pasta, preferably ( also non-essential). See steps one through three if you fancy recreating one of the most appalling culinary undertakings of my student life – well, either this or the mackerel and boiled egg wrap with melted cheese and hot sauce. Yes, it did indeed smell akin to the interior of Blackbeard’s mould-lined galoshes and no, it was never me who left that smell in the kitchen. Someone must have left the bins open, or a decomposing rat somewhere…

In the present era of cooking I found myself straying from the allure of pasta. Largely in part due to my own self-induced aversion. Having developed a dreadful, acidic cycle of calorie counting, thus pasta was chalked down as the devil’s creation, up there with profiteroles. It may have been a year without a single strand, tube or any more of the aforementioned shapes gracing my hungered orifice. Yet as we so often do, in overcoming this habitual restriction I returned once more. I was led back, unknowingly by the allure of a flavour I had not previously encountered – Gochujang. Now I know what you’re thinking, what the F**k? Bear with me here. My initial discovery of this materialised in a rather bland tofu tapa – as odd as it sounds, yes. Tofu in all its forms is a puzzlingly strange decision to weaponise as a tapa, to me at least. Digressing, I endeavoured to locate some gochujang, eventually picking some up and reenacting the typical stereotype of walking through the Asian supermarket in awe of the sheer abundance of ingredients I’d once deemed unobtainable. Of course, with the enduring societal benefit of multiculturalism, it ain’t hard to understand that people have, and always will cook with these ingredients, even the aloof who walk the aisle or those who deem that time they had ‘great sauce’ with their sushi to be a fabled flavour, unobtainable unless sought on the silk road or other nefarious sits, will come to find that fabled sauce and all its competing brands right here. Yet as one who grew up in a household where the incorporation of paprika was deemed to be ‘pushing the boat out’ this was a revelation. After overcoming my culinary tourism, burying the feeling of the aloof amateur and finally getting down to cooking with this thing – I realised I was out of tofu. Boo hoo.

Hopping online I chased down some recipes and came upon one which used gochujang as a swap for puree. It makes total sense I thought! Of course this would work! Having only recently learnt this mythical paste could be bought – why didn’t I think of this?! So the experiment began. It was formed of a rather undercooked, then subsequently par-crisped penne, some ailing spinach, rescued from its fate of moulding in the fridge’s unexplored  deep, and of course the staple gochujang, whose spice was diminished somewhat by the addition of soya milk. Nevertheless this amalgamation had reinvigorated my love for the sauce delivery vehicles once more – and as I lay, sated on the sofa, I realised that not a calorie had been counted. I had merely enjoyed the dish, evaded the anxiety of measuring my ingredients and consigned myself to indulge within a bowl of newfound flavour. I’ll drop the recipe below for those curious ones amongst you to try for yourselves. I’m not saying it’ll cure your calorie counting malaise nor negate or diminish the anxiety that those of us with disordered eating have to endure. Though I’m sure this is bound to bring something new to your buds.

So often have I found myself treading familiar grounds in the sake of nostalgic revisitations to experienced sensation. Yet never once have I had an experience as I have with pasta. There’s never been a sense of its appeal waning with age nor have I grown critical of the dishes I delighted in as a child – rather with each pilgrimage back to the annals of nostalgia I find a sensation of comfort – almost like there’s a word for this type of food but it eludes me currently. Though mum’s way still gives me shivers, in cold sweats I awaken, recalling with bitter taste, the incalculable volume of pasta water which was willingly drained of its starchy utility, consigned to the abyssal vaults of the sinks drain. Those possibilities to bind the sauce, all but cast aside. Yet when not gripped by the crimes of my forebears, my recollection and continued joy resides in the flexibility, variability of ingredients, the finish, the saucing process or even eating the damn thing cold, it never relents in its capability to bring both satiation and pleasure into my life. It’s been a turbulent time of lows and highs, yet I know that the one enduring love in life will always be pasta. Each time we separate, my heart grows only fonder, I think I’m in love.