Simple Pasta

Introduction: Channeling la Dolce Vita

The summer when I started working in earnest on this manuscript, I had planned to take the kids to Italy. The pandemic put an end to that; so instead, my good friend Amy and I hunkered down with our collective five kids and two dogs on Fire Island. We decided we’d manifest our own La Dolce Vita. Each night we rolled a lot of pasta as I jotted down recipe notes and the kids waited patiently for yet another 10:00 p.m. dinner. We filled our days with saltwater and aperitivo. We listened to music, dressed up for each other, and put on lipstick, even though it was going to be slurped off by linguine. After we put the kids to bed, Amy and I would sit down with a bottle of red, google “Italian villas,” and daydream about travel, touch, and socializing again. The next day, we headed back into the kitchen and made pasta, yet again.

This book could have been called Pasta, I Love You So Much It Hurts. It’s been a long-standing affair. My love of homemade pasta can be traced to a specific time and restaurant. I was a young kid growing up in a coastal steel town two hours north of Sydney, Australia. On Friday nights, my parents would take my brother and me to our local Italian restaurant, The Trieste, for dinner. They’d bundle us up in our pajamas (yes, we went in our robes and slippers) because by the end of the night, driving home with our bellies full, my brother and I would fall asleep in the back of the Kombi van and have to be carried to bed. Take me back! As kids, we picked up on our parents’ relief and relaxation that only Friday evenings can bring about.

Going to the Trieste for dinner was an affordable treat that we all loved. It was a family-run restaurant with about ten Formica tables and a carpeted floor. It was BYOB. To get to the bathroom you had to walk through the kitchen, past the cook. There was a Chupa Chups lollipop stand on the bar that loomed over us, keeping children in check. We knew that if we played our cards right and behaved throughout dinner, we’d each get to choose one at the end of the night.

Those Italians knew a thing or two about parenting. My mom always appreciated how welcoming the owners were to children. This was back when there were no iPads and kids weren’t always welcome at restaurants. Kids could be, well, kids: unpredictable, cranky, loving, annoying, curious, and excited all in a hot minute. I might be making this up, but I have memories of the owner allowing my brother and me behind the bar at the end of the night to help ring up the bill on the cash register.

Each week, we ordered the same thing: sizzling garlic prawns that came in a flaming-hot black skillet, spaghetti Bolognese that my brother and I split, and schnitzel for my parents. The laminated dessert menu showcased garish premade gelato that arrived rock-hard and never tasted as good as the pictures looked. Dessert was Trieste’s weakest link, something I’ve remedied in Simple Pasta (and in my previous book, Simple Cake, come to think of it).

Dessert aside, everything in life felt right during those meals. I think such a happy childhood experience is why I adore twirling pasta and eating simple Italian food so much. I will never tire of the feeling it gives me. It’s my comfort food. My escape. My indulgence. My way back to a time when life felt uncomplicated.

Sadly, a restaurant like the Trieste is almost impossible to find these days. But that doesn’t mean you can’t re-create the feeling of contentment (and pasta!) at home. In these pages, Italian is the starting point, but you’ll also see influences from places I have lived in and traveled to. I’ve also been inspired by chefs and cooks who make homemade pasta exceptionally well. Their restaurants are places at which I’d happily eat every night, if I could. They don’t just consistently cook delicious homemade pasta but they also fill my soul in a similar way as the Trieste.

There was Dolomiti’s, the Italian restaurant where I worked in my early twenties, and I loved Old Papa’s Cafe in Fremantle, too many trattorias around Sydney to name, and Frankies in Brooklyn (my local for over a decade). I could happily eat at Ignacio Mattos, Altro Paradiso any night of the week. I’m crazy for Missy Robbins’s Lilia and Misi in Williamsburg. It’s dreamy to sit at the bar at Via Carota in the West Village, and Flour + Water in San Francisco is our new haunt, when we can get a table. Il Corvo Pasta in Seattle was absolutely worth the hour-long wait that I made my kids suffer. Rolf and Daughters blew my mind with their seasonal pasta when we visited Nashville. These favorites have inspired me to imbue Simple Pasta with seasonal creativity and the feeling of making everyone welcome.

But here’s the skinny, and why I had to write this book. How was it that someone who worshipped pasta had never made her own fresh pasta until she was forty? Now, I religiously make it for my family. Yes, it really is that easy! I’m guessing I’m not alone. Well, this is the cookbook that’s going to be your gateway. Yes, you are going to make homemade pasta. And you are going to love it.

As well as giving you the tried-and-true classics that we all crave, I’ve made sure the recipes are focused, with an emphasis on produce that’s either growing in the garden or available at the market. There’s a wonderful improvisational nature to pasta; it’s essentially a blank canvas for seasonal produce. I love that pasta can be a quick meal for one or a feast. Once you get to know these basic doughs, you will really be able to play. And for those nights when you just don’t have the wherewithal for homemade pasta in you, reaching for store-bought dried pasta is just A-OK. In fact, for some recipes, it’s preferred. For convenience, each ingredient list starts with the amount of pasta needed, whether fresh or store-bought.

In the end, I did make it to Italy. My daughter Opal told me, “You can’t make a pasta book and not go.” We photographed half the book on Fire Island, where it all began, and then took off to a villa in Marsala, Sicily, for a week. It was exhilarating to travel again. Opal was right, and so was the gelato. Collaborating and creating something from nothing, both on a barrier island and in a foreign country was magical. I hope Simple Pasta ignites your own wanderlust and that one of my recipes, menus, or personal anecdotes sparks an idea that you can run with and make your own. I’d do anything for a great meal and a belly laugh. It’s pure pleasure and joy. My wish is for you to find this feeling within these pages.