With everything shut down and everyone inside, it’s a perfect time to run the piece I was inspired to write by my last visit to LA when Eataly was having a pasta sale. Eataly is a favorite stop in LA, and I find it expensive, but he sources all the products on the shelves from different regions of Italy. When I saw real Italian spaghetti on sale for $2 a bag I had to try my experiment. I bought a lot of it, and I’m still glad I did even though it cost me 40 extra minutes with TSA.
I have long surmised that the pasta in Italy is fundamentally different than what we have in America. Here a carb-laden meal leaves us sluggish. I call it a carb hangover. Here we get fat from eating it a lot, and while there are certainly other lifestyle factors that figure in, these two products are very different. I hear it goes all the way back to the wheat.
As soon as I resettled in here I boiled a bag of the real stuff. At that time, we hadn’t talked to Graison Gill, the owner of Bellegarde who maintains that pasta doesn't need fat and salt. I respectfully disagree that pasta is merely a vessel for delicious sauces, which contain fat and salt. Plain boiled pasta is simply that, a limp carb.
I took some salty ham from the fridge and chopped it. Searing it till crispy. I threw some frozen peas into the same pan, adding cream, parmesan, and coarse black pepper. I tossed the hot wet pasta, turned it into a plate, grated more parmesan on top and had a carb fest with fat and salt and Italian pasta. Somehow the Italian pasta made it better. I could swear the carb hangover wasn’t there. ML agreed.
But with any good study, many trials will be required. Not a problem. And who couldn’t use a little comfort food right about now?
Pasta Carbonara
I lb boiled pasta
1 ½ cups julienned deli ham crisped in a pan
1 cup frozen peas
¾ cup heavy cream
1 cup grated parmesan cheese
Crushed black pepper
1. Boil pasta to package directions.
2. Sear ham in a large hot skillet.
3. Add peas.
4. Pour in the cream and add ⅔ of the parmesan cheese.
5. Toss in pasta, coating it all.
6. Add pepper to taste
7. Serve and use remaining parmesan on top if desired.
