I do not showcase pasta as much as I probably should on this blog, given that I live in Italy and we all love it in any shape or size. The reason is that more often than not, we throw together a pasta on a Friday night, while opening a bottle of wine to unwind, using up the last wilted greens and limp vegetables left in our fridge, and embellishing it with some pantry favorites (tuna, anchovies, smoked pancetta, olives...). No recipe, no amounts, no pre-planning. Just a relaxed, last-minute family meal made even better by the endless possibilities of the whole week end stretching ahead of us.
Granted, pretty much all of the recipes I blog about are easy and foolproof, but pasta somehow always just seemed too obvious to write about. That is until I started thinking about all the times I look up techniques or recipes that are extremely common, staples in many households, especially when they are dishes from different cultures. If I look up how to make an authentic curry or how they cook rice in Japan, there must be someone in India or Japan wondering how much to salt their pasta water or how to get their pasta dishes creamier without adding butter or cream.
What may be obvious and second nature to some of us, isn't necessarily so for others. Sometimes we just need basic guidelines or flavor profiles to boost our confidence when trying to cook something new.
