Pasta is great. It’s like hey, let me take delicious things like butter,or meat, or tomatoes or basil and then let me just fuckin mix whatever the fuck i want in and combine it with some random ass noodles.
That’s basically pasta.
BUT, there’s a big difference between “basically pasta” and “holy shit food of the gods” pasta, and that is that the latter has some rules that must be followed.
10 PASTA COMMANDMENTS COMIN UP:
Always boil pasta in boiling SALTED water. Ever had a dish where you forgot to salt it before cooking it, and no matter how much seasoning you did post saute/sear, it still sort of tasted bland on the inside? Same goes for pasta. Your sauce could be fuckin on point, but if you don’t salt dat pasta water, ya fugged, bruh.
Always have your sauce ready BEFORE the pasta. Pestos, emulsified butter sauces, bolognese sauces, they should be in their respective sauce pans, heated and ready to go (unless we’re takin pesto or carbonarashit, as those go bad with heat). The worst thing you could do is fuck up and overcook your delicious pasta bc you were too busy making or finishing up your sauce.
Always TASTE your pasta. I don’t care if the package says it’s ready in 1 minute or an hour, taste your pasta from the boiling water at least 2 minutes in, and every 2 minutes after that. Al dente’s usually the way to go, but you’ll never know when to take it out if you’re not constantly tasting.
DO NOT strain your pasta, wasting your pasta water and allowing your pasta to cool. Use tongs to take pasta straight up form the boiling water (don’t dry it, nerds) and throw it in your sauce. A little pasta water gets in? no probs, and I’ll tell you why.
If your sauce is reducing too much, or it’s too tight, add pasta water. It’s salted and hot and ready to go, it won’t dilute the flavor at all, you’re golden duude. golden.
Finish your pasta in the sauce, allow it to become homogenous, let the sauce stick to the pasta, BECOME ONE WITH THE PASTA BRUH.
Add cheese last, because cheese get’s weird and fucked up in hot pans, so it’s best to throw that on right before you’re ready to eat that shit up.
4 oz is a normal serving size for pasta. If you don’t have a scale, that’s basically like the first pic above. If you hold the pasta like such, and the width of the bunch is a little smaller than an american quarter, then ur good 2 go bruh.
Dry pastas are not better/worse than fresh pasta. They’re legit just made with different flours using different procedures. One isn’t ‘fancier’ than the other u pretentious buttrockets.
PASTA IS NOT SCARY, IT’S DELICIOUS. These rules look tough, but honestly it’s not that bad bruh. I believe in u.
and now, onto the recipe I used for my pasta. It’s a restaurant favorite, we always make it on the line because it’s simple, delicious and super filling.
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Caciopepe Pasta serves: 1 (lol like id share this with ppl lolol)
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Ingredients-
salt water for boiling (just salt some water, don’t fuckin travel to the beach in hopes of created the most bomb pasta ever)
1 bunch of pasta
2 bay leaves
1 sprig thyme
cold butter (approximately 2/3 cups cut into small pads
parmesan cheese to taste
a shit ton of black pepper to taste
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Procedure-
Throw some pasta into some boiling water and do that thing where you constantly taste test the pasta to see if it’s ready. In the meantime, make ur sauce u lazy bumbum.
Add a little boiling pasta water to a saute pan over low heat, and whisk/mix in the butter quickly till it’s creamy and emulsified. If it’s too thick, just whisk in a teeny bit of pasta water. Add 2 bay leaves and a sprig of thyme for aroma, remove when pasta’s ready.
Once the pasta’s ready to rock and roll, use tongs to scoop it up and place it in the sauce. Flip and mix using tongs. Add cheese and crack a lot of pepper. Add salt if it needs seasoning, add more pasta water if the sauce tightens.
and bam, ya ready to roll.
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I promise u if you use these pasta techniques, people will think ur literally a GOD. ur welcs.
What mortal could rescue Tam Lin from that shadow life but Janet who loved him? She told him she would save him isf she could, and Tam Li described how the mortal must challenge the power of the Fairy Queen. Then he faded into the sun-speckled forest.
From Time-Life Books’s Fairies and Elves, part of The Enchanted World Series, 1984. Illustration by Jill Karla Schwarz
Confession: This is the first place I encountered the story of Tam Lin, and where I fell in love with it. I will freely admit it was largely because of the beautiful illustrations, particularly the last one.
The bare-chested, disheveled Tam Lin resting under Janet’s mantle just caught my attention. I was ten, maybe eleven years old at the time. Thirty years later, seventeen years of running a website, forty four versions of the ballad, more than a dozen related stories, a couple of citations in articles and theses, pages of analysis, maps, well over a hundred books, plays, articles… and here’s the images that kicked that off for me. Enjoy.
Or “Mom Knight” which is what I kept calling it for most of the time I worked on this. This was my story for Valor, a fairy tale anthology I was in last year! It’s a really great book, and I’m so glad I got to be a part of it. You can purchase a copy here.
