One pot pastas have been an obsession of mine ever since I saw them pop up on the internet. I’m pretty sure the first one I ever came across was Martha’s, but I never actually got around to making it. Years went by and I finally, finally got around to giving one pot pasta a try and oh my gosh, I can honestly say I do not know why I went all those years without making it.
To be honest, I was a little skeptical of one-pot pastas. I didn’t really understand how everything could come together. I’ve always, always cooked pasta separately – even when I’m making a noodle soup, I’ll cook the noodles on the side and then add them into the broth. So it was with a bit of hesitation that I made this. I went with some super spring-time flavours because the past week has just been absolutely gorgeous. Of course today is incredibly gloomy again – spring isn’t here just yet.
While I’m waiting for those bright and fresh spring days, I’ll be filling up on one-pot meals. This came together quickly and I was really pleased with the silkiness of the sauce. Lots of pasta recipes actually call for a bit of pasta water to bind – the starch that is released when pasta is cooked is similar to the starch released when you make a risotto, so the theory behind one pot pasta is sound. The result: a silky, slightly sticky thick sauce flavoured with garlic, red pepper flakes, much like the classic aglio e olio. I didn’t use any cheese in this recipe and I found that I didn’t miss it at all. Don’t forget the squeeze of lemon at the end – it adds just the right amount of brightness and acid to go with the scallops.
I hope you guys give this recipe a try! And to encourage you even more, I’m hosting a giveaway of the braiser I used to make it! See below for details.
One-Pot Lemon Scallop Pea Spaghetti Recipe inspired by The Faux Martha
serves 3-4
prep time: 10 minutes
cook time: 15 minutes
total time: 25 minutes
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1 lb small scallops
- 4 cloves of garlic, minced
- 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
- 2 1/2 cups low-sodium chicken stock
- 1/2 pound spaghetti
- 1 lemon, zested and juiced (about 1/4 cup juice)
- 3/4 cup peas, defrosted
- 1/4 cup roughly chopped flat leaf parsley
- red pepper flakes, to serve
- salt and freshly ground pepper
Pat the scallops dry and season all sides generously with salt and pepper. Heat up a small amount of olive oil over medium high heat and cook the scallops until golden brown on both sides, 1-2 minutes per side. Remove from the pan and set aside.
Add the remaining olive oil to the pan and turn the heat to medium. Add the garlic and red pepper flakes, and cook, stirring, until the garlic is slightly golden, but not brown, about 1 minute. Add the chicken stock and uncooked pasta. Bring to a boil and then turn down to low. Cover and cook for 8 minutes.
Remove the cover and simmer to reduce the sauce, stirring occasionally, about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the scallops, defrosted peas, lemon juice, lemon zest, and flat leaf parsley. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper to taste and enjoy hot!
Giveaway: I’ve paired up with Le Creuset to give away one gorgeous braiser in the winner’s color of choice! I am seriously in love with mine – it’s perfect for making one-pot pastas!
Enter: To enter, leave a comment below with your favorite pasta memory. I want to hear ALL the details! I’ll randomly choose a winner and notify them through email. Open to US residents only. (Sorry international friends!) Also, if you’re feeling so inclined, please vote for me on the Munchies. It won’t get you an extra entry, but it will be bonus karma! Contest ends March 4th at 12pm PST. Good luck!
Update: Congrats Ace! Get ready for the one pot pastas because a braiser is heading your way! Keep your eyes peel for an email from me!
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My favorite pasta memory was making spaghetti and meatballs from scratch with my favorite person (my partner) for the first time. We had never made pasta from scratch before and spent at least an hour laughing so hard at our really awful sticky dough. In the end, it actually turned out quite delicious and by the time we had finished the meal we had two bottles of wine finished as well. I think Pepin would have been proud ;)
My favorite pasta memory has to be the very first time I made macaroni and cheese with my boyfriend. I had put in all the effort, chose the perfect blend of extra sharp cheddar and mozzarella mixed into a creamy perfectly-concocted bechamel poured over deliciously al denta shells, only to have him say “it’s good, but I’d prefer it will parmesan and less sharp of a cheddar.” AHHHHH when people critique your food after all the effort you put in. Now I know what it feels like to be my mom!
I made an eggplant romesco sauce to dress some rigatoni. It was really garlicky, creamy from the eggplant, rich from the almonds and hearty, even though it was vegan. This kind of strays away from the pasta element, but oh well. I ended up thinning out the sauce with chicken broth for a makeshift soup when I had my wisdom teeth pulled out and I couldn’t do any solids. It was still fabulous, even while loopy from the pain and the meds.
A particularly perfect dish of lasagna in Bologna about ten years ago. Nothing distinctive about it other than its perfection, the paradigmatic Bolognese in a small trattoria with no pretense other than to serve simple perfect food.
My mom always made lasagna that never held together. It was soupy with overcooked noodles and Ragu sauce. I loved it.
My favorite pasta memory was when my host family took me to a family reunion in a small farmhouse in the hills of Tuscany, outside of Florence, Italy. I didn’t know anyone (and could barely speak Italian), but upon walking into the kitchen was immediately embraced with hugs and kisses, and promptly roped into stuffing ravioli with a ricotta-parsley filling. The squares of pillowy awesomeness were sauced with cinghiale (wild boar) that cooked all morning in a heady tomato sauce potent with garlic and swimming in olive oil. As we ate the ravioli, I thought, “This is what food is – a language.” I smiled at my host family and they kissed my cheek in response, spooning more ravioli onto my plate.
My favorite pasta memory would have to be the first time I made a one pot pasta! It was simple with just tomatoes, basil, onions, and some garlic, and I was just as skeptical as it sounds like you were. But it was delicious and so easy and the best part: only one pot to clean! Can’t wait to try out this recipe!!
Best pasta memory is discovering how fun and delicious my family’s homemade pasta is. We made hundreds of ravioli!
My favorite pasta memory is my mom making spaghetti. She may have used prego,, but to this day it’s my favorite when she makes it.
My first time in Rome without my parents, my friend and I walked into Piazza Navona, started talking to these two artists that were eating something that looked and smelled delicious and asked them for a lunch recommendation. They pointed us to Corallao, a few streets over and far from the touristy cafes. I ordered my first real spaghetti carbonara and was completely floored by how good it was. I found out they used guanciale instead of pancetta or bacon and vowed to find some when I got home to try and recreate it. It wasn’t easy, but I finally found some in the North End. Mission complete.
Although originally from Boston I grew up living in England, and despite all the wonderful things there it always felt like there was something missing. So we would scour the local stores for decidely American things such as A&W rootbeer, Duncan Hines cake frosting, and any brand peanut butter. But the thing that would take us home most was my mother’s homemade chicken and noodles – it was a single dish meal in similar fashion to this with broad homemade fettuccine ribbons that imparted that exact stickiness to the sauce and was so warm and delicious that you would never even think that people often rely on cheese to get that deliciously gooey texture. I think this is where my love of pasta was born
I grew up on Portland with an Old Spaghetti Factory nearby. It’s this huge round, purple building right on the river, and I order the same thing every time: spaghetti with browned butter and mizythra cheese. So do my sisters and my mom. It’s so good!
While living in Spain, I offered to make lasagna for a group of Italians. I did not have the recipe from home but fortunately remembered most of it. To my amazement. It was a crowd pleaser. A good pasta dish brings many diverse cultures together.
My favorite pasta memory is actually of a spoon! During my college years, I began cooking a weekly dinner for a small group of friends, about 6 of us. By the end of the year, the group had grown to about 20, and I was making huge pots of Minestrone, giant lasagnas, and pan after of pan of eggplant parmesan. (No, I’m not Italian, but Italian food lends itself so well to large groups, don’t you think?) During all this time, I didn’t have a spaghetti spoon, which my best friend noticed. So she bought me one. This was about ten years ago, and I still use the same spaghetti spoon!
On our fist Valentine’s Day as a married couple, a few years ago, my husband and I decided to stay in and try our hands at making pasta carbonara for the first time. It was a delicious first attempt and we ate the whole pot of it while splitting a bottle of wine and watching Fellini’s film 8 1/2. It was perfect <3
I consider myself a pretty good cook these days, but I learned over 40 years of marriage. My husband used to make his famous tuna casserole (as I learned how to cook and my kids loved loved loved it and still request today – 2 boxes Mac and Cheese prepared in microwave – 1 stick butter – 2 cans tuna – baked in the oven. Served with peas of course. Hahahahaha! My finest pasta dish today – and I have some delicious ones – wouldn’t rank as high.
My father’s lemon pasta–as a single dad he learned how to cook later in life and his lemon pasta was a revelation the 1st time he made it for us. Roasted veggies, bacon and a garlicky-sweet lemon oil to toss the hot pasta. So so good.
My favorite pasta memory is the first time I helped make it from scratch. I’ve always done dry pasta, and seeing it rolled out over and over and then cut into fettucine and then so quickly cooked with such delicious outcome was a fun event. I don’t have a pasta roller, so I still just use dry, but one day!
my favorite memories about pasta involve my brother–that boy could and can put away more spaghetti with meat sauce than anyone i’ve ever known! i will ALWAYS think of him when i see a plate of spaghetti. :)
Pasta. My favorite pasta now is the black bean spaghetti with potpourri vegetables and a touch of cream coconut.
I looooove homemade spaghetti and meatballs..comfort in a bowl. I make mine with ground veal & ground beef, parsley, panko, egg, garlic and Parmesan cheese.
I loved making pasta with my dad when I was little. We would make the dough and use the pasta maker to make it into fettuccine or spaghetti. We would then fry parsley and garlic, toss the pasta in the sauce, and have the most memorable meal :)
I loved making stuffed pasta shells with my mom growing up!!
Making lasagna with my mom!
My favorite pasta recipe is my mom’s spaghetti and meat sauce!
My favorite pasta memory was pretty recent. My girlfriend and I tried making homemade mushroom ravioli and it was a mess. I think half of the ravioli survived cooking without splitting open. After that was done we still had about half a recipe of the filling, but there was no way we were tackling ravioli again so soon. I put all of the filling in a lasagna, used store-bought noodles, added some canned tomatoes and it was the best lasagna I’ve ever had.
i think my favorite pasta memory is dinner at my great-grandmother’s every saturday. she didn’t always make pasta (though there was usually some around – we are italian after all) but when she did there were generally MEATBALLS!! i’ve tried my whole adult life to get them just right and i still need some work to get them as soft and delicious.
When I first started dating my boyfriend, I decided I needed to teach him the basics of how to cook via a series of dinners. One of the first meals he asked for was spaghetti, which I’m not too big on, so I bought a flat of italian sausage instead of ground beef. He’s not a real adventurous eater, so this was a wild change for him (while I thought it was nothing special). He absolutely loved it though! To this day he still calls it “our pasta” and is one of the only meals he knows how to make.
when I was living in Australia, a friend of mine taught me how to make homemade pasta by hand. we recruited other friends to make homemade bread, salads, and a few sauces, and we all had a feast (plus wine of course). It was my favorite pasta meal ever
Definitely min teaching me how to make Mac and cheese that did not involve a box. I remember the mystifying instruction “keep stirring until it smells right”, not understanding what flour and butter was supposed to smell like. The results were great, and I still make it the same way.
The first taste of ramen at Ippudo. Transcendent.
Also when my daughter told me I make the best lasagna … or, as she called it, omelet.
I remember the first time I tried to make pasta at home (without a machine or roller) and made these beet noodles that looked a heck of a lot more like pastrami than it did anything else! We joked that we were eating “meat” noodles and not beet noodles, but they tasted fine all the same. Future attempts have been much more successful :)
My grandmother used to always make us spaghetti sauce. I can remember sitting at the kids table in her home with a big plate of spaghetti and meatballs and a big green can of kraft parmesan. Now, I sub out for the real stuff :)
One pot pastas make it so easy for a mom to amke dinner! Please come up with more one pot recipes!
I still have not made one-pot pasta! It’s on my list. I’m the worst–I always add the pasta right to the soup, and then complain the next day when the noodles soak up all the broth. When will I learn?
xo
I hope this counts as a favorite pasta memory… I recently made a lovely Valentine’s Dinner for my wonderful Valentine. I made Coq au Reisling paired with Cacio e Pepe (from the blog “Not Without Salt” so it included a little cheese bowl!!) and roasted brussel sprouts. It was the best meal I’ve made to date! The company helped, along with the sentiment of the day, but the peppery, buttery simplicity of the cacio e pepe was wonderful! Next on my list to tackle is gnocchi. Not sure why, but it always alludes me!
My favorite pasta memory is when my Dad was in charge of making dinner (only when my Mom was going out) he would make us shells with cabot cheddar for the best mac and cheese! It is still my go to comfort food!
My favorit pasta memory is from when I was a kid. I was on holiday with my family in Italy and had a pasta dish for dinner at a restaurant, those long pastas were not easy to eat (it must have looked quiet funny…!) but gosh it was good!
My favorite pasta memory is from a family trip to Europe when I was about 16. We were with a commercial tour group that took us to the island Burano near Venice and set up a lunch for us. It was possibly a tourist trap, but I remember thinking it was the best meal I’d ever had! There were multiple courses including one pasta – not the American-style spaghetti and meat sauce that I was used to, but a simpler “first course.” Loved it all!
When I was in fifth grade, one of the teachers decided to teach a week-long cooking class to a few lucky students. The most popular dish by far was a creamy, slightly spicy dish called chicken fricassee. I took the recipe home to my dad (who–don’t tell my mom–is the best cook in my family), who took a glance at it and started cooking immediately. Problem was, we were missing probably half of the ingredients! That did not bother my dad, who made a few substitutions but mostly relied on his tongue. The end result was a creamy, mushroomy, basil-y, oniony, cheesy pot of chicken goodness. He threw in a bunch of pasta at the end because he wasn’t sure there would be enough for everyone. To this day it’s one of my favorite dishes to make, especially for company. It’s also the perfect recipe for when I’m homesick; making a pot instantly takes me back to my dad’s kitchen ^^
Lovely lovely!! I love le creuset- I just got a dutch oven for V-day (thank you, hubby) and I’ve been in love with it! My favorite pasta memory was one I bungled… it was in college, and my husband and I were not yet engaged and I wanted to make him a meal. Ha… it did not turn well, but everything else did :)
my favorite pasta memory is actually from a few months ago. i made homemade mac and cheese for the first time (my aunt’s recipe) with king crab from prince edward island. i was so worried that the sauce would turn out grainy and inedible but it was perfect. i was ecstatic!
My favorite pasta memories include making homemade spaghetti and meatballs in the winter with my mom. Simply the best!
I was going to talk about a pasta dish that I made, but my NEW favorite pasta memory is from this past Valentine’s Day. My darling 12 year old daughter planned out a whole dinner menu that included chicken pot pie, baked potato soup, and mac and cheese. She went through each recipe many times to make sure we had everything, and I was so happy to be HER sous chef this time. The dinner was delicious, filled with love, and very special to all of us.
Thanks for a chance at the lovely braiser, Stephanie! :)
My Dad made pasta for us every Sunday when I was growing up. I have tried making it according to his “recipe,” but it never tastes the same. Even today, nothing takes me back to my cozy, happy childhood than smelling his sauce.
I’ve never tried one-pot pastas either, so glad to know it worked out so well for you!
I made probably the best lasagna of my life recently, which happens to be awful timing because I started WW at the beginning of the year and, well, pasta isn’t high up on the list of things I’m supposed to eat a lot of! But I took two hours on a Sunday to make a pork bolognese sauce, then paired it with a ricotta/fresh mozzarella blend and some flat noodles in the oven for an hour. It was absolutely divine!
This is my first time commenting, and I’m sure you hear this all the time, but your photography is absolutely GORGEOUS. Major inspiration!
I’ve tried a one pot pasta one time with spaghetti and milk. It turned out beautifully!
My favorite pasta memory is when my mom made pasta for holidays and would add food coloring to the boiling water to dye the pasta. We had red (or pink, really) pasta for Valentine’s Day, and green pasta on St. Patrick’s Day. It was a small little way to celebrate, but I looked forward to it every year :-)
My favorite pasta moment was when the first time I made penne vodka from scratch for my 11 year son. It was his favorite pasta dish and being from an asian family background, my family grew up on jarred pasta sauces and chef boyardee because we didn’t know how to make Italian food from scratch (especially sauces). After hours of research, i made him my very first vodka sauce. My son said to me, that was the best penne vodka he ever had and it was better than the restaurant. Totally melted my heart <3
my favorite pasta memory would be the first time my korean mom attempted spaghetti.. used the jarred sauce, but she doctored it up with tons of garlic, onions, shrimp and kielbasa sausage! it was one of the best spaghetti dishes ever. now, she makes it everytime i go home :)
My favorite pasta memory is making spaghetti and red sauce with a friend at age 9 or 10. We thought that adding extra seasonings to a jar of Prego made us such hotshots.
Sunday family gatherings for lasagna dinners at my grandparents house and the first time my husband and I made homemade pasta!
My favorite pasta memory is my mom’s spaghetti. She used to serve it with jarred pasta sauce to which she had added little cubes of firm tofu. When I was a kid, I thought that was how everyone ate their spaghetti!
It’s so hard to choose just one great pasta memory! I’d say it was when I made homemade spaghetti sauce for my whole family on a whim (had to make triple the normal amount) and even the pickiest eaters were wanting the recipe. It was a great feeling! That’s when I fell in love with cooking :)
Best pasta memory: in Montreal, in the middle of the summer, on an adventure with my new not-so boyfriend who is now my fiancé. We went on a day trip with my mom and ended up splitting up to look around. He and I got hungry and dipped into a restaurant to have bruschetta and carbonara to share. I have no idea what the restaurant was called or what street we found it on. But the pasta, oh the pasta, it was heavenly. Creamy, filling, bacony. If only I knew the name of the restaurant, we’d go back next time we are up north!
I would say my most interesting pasta memory is my mother’s lasagna. Growing up my mom would make it about once a month and I always looked forward to it. We are not an Italian family, so her lasagna was definitely an Americanized (is that a word?) version. The truly amazing thing was and is, my mother HATES cheese; she despises it. My mother won’t eat cheese flavored anything and can detect it from a mile away. She swears up and down that it tastes like soap. HA! So, you guessed it, my mom has never even tasted her own lasagna and it’s delicious. I can’t imagine making a dish and NEVER tasting it. Thanks mom, love you!!
I keep seeing pictures of one pot pasta but no one actually saying “Yes I did this and it actually worked as planned”… so thank you!!
Favorite pasta memory is a mushy one – I had had a really off week with the boyfriend, where we argued over some trivial and some not so trivial things but decided to get together anyways. I show up, and he’s made this thick, hearty meat sauce and spaghetti and we just scooped it into bowls and sat together on the couch and it was just this perfect moment of realizing we were gonna be ok. Yeah, I’m that girl. Love via stomach.
My mom’s lasagna, the burnt edges were the best part!
I think my fave pasta memory has to be my very first attempt making from-scratch mac & cheese. A friend had just had her first baby and I knew this cheesy dish would satisfy her craving and provide lots of comfort. It was amazing! The pasta wasn’t mushy and the roux didn’t burn…and my friend was very, very happy.
Just after I moved to a new state, a family friend took me out to dinner. It was a strange but delicious dinner- we started with hamachi crudo with blood orange and fennel, and a salad, then moved on to the main event- the pastas. I got spaghetti with uni butter and it was the best pasta i’ve ever had. Subtle, briney, and unexpected. That meal, combined with the fact that I got to see someone who made my first few months in a new city more comfortable, was the perfect welcome dinner.
I love pasta with vodka sauce. I usually make it with penne, but decided to make it on a snowy Saturday night this winter and only had spaghetti around. My partner and I opened a bottle of red wine and had a lovely evening in the kitchen. Later that week we were eating leftovers and he was telling me about how he hated spaghetti as a child. He ate all other pasta, but never enjoyed spaghetti. I asked when he started liking it and he responded: “this week.” We are all evolving as eaters, but the fact that I made the pot that changed his mind is the best.
The pasta I’ve eaten in Italy will always be a winner, but I’m lucky to live in a city (Philadelphia) with vibrant Italian history and authentic food! Also, I just bought a house, and I would LOVE to win this beautiful braiser.
My favorite pasta memory is my grandmother’s blue crab mac and cheese. We would spend the Saturday summer evenings picking crabs and the remaining meat would be fold into a light cream sauce on Sunday for us for dinner. I was always more excited for the Sunday mac than the crabs
Having ravioli bolognese in Bologna, where my family is from, when I went on a trip to Italy with my parents and younger sibling. :)
I also remember first seeing this from Martha and then now, everywhere. I was/am a bit skeptical too but I’m coming around with versions like this. This looks scrumptious and I’m convinced I have to try this technique!
As for favorite pasta memory – everything around pasta seems warm and cozy but my favorite memory is having a dish of black squid ink pasta with seafood. It was special not only because it was delicious but because my husband and I were eating al fresco in front of the Pacific Ocean on our honeymoon! We spotted a whale or two also. : )
Yum yum. My favorite “pasta” memory is my dad making mac and cheese with whatever mystery meat was around the house when my mom worked nights in the OB department at the hospital.
My favorite pasta memory is when I was a child and my dad would make chicken parm and spaghetti for dinner. He would work all day, and then come home and put so much care and love into making the best chicken parm I have ever had. He used pounded out chicken thighs (so tender and juicy, never dry!) with a crispy fried breadcrumb crust. Then he smothered it in mozzarella and a zesty tomato sauce and baked it until it was bubbling and brown. The spaghetti was cooked al dente. With no sauce on top! I would cut up my chicken parm right on top of the spaghetti, and then eat the best part: The spaghetti would be covered in bits of breadcrumb crust, hot chicken thigh juice, drops of tomato sauce, and gooey cheese. I’ve nevered been able to replicate it myself, but I try every once in awhile. Far and beyond my favorite pasta experience.
When I was young and visiting my grandparents with my little sister my Oma (grandmother) would make us the most comfort-food recipe of all time: that tiny star-shaped pasta with butter and lots of parmesan. I can still taste how good it was and how much I loved my Oma for making us this dish and how decadent it felt to have pasta in the shape of stars.
Growing up, my Filipino grandma would make spaghetti for dinner pretty frequently. The best part was eating the leftovers the next day, cold, between two slices of white bread!
My Favorite memory is my mothers Sunday sauce with Italian sausage, pork ribs, meatballs and then she would poach some eggs in the sauce. good stuff.
My favorite pasta memory is of our whole family, gathered around a big table for Mom’s lasagna. The last time we had it was at Christmas time, and we had so many family and friends that we had to move dinner to a banquet hall to fit everyone! That ooey, gooey, cheesy pasta deliciousness has become our family favorite.
I voted for you. :) Had to vote for Michael Symon, too – he’s our hometown boy!
pasta memory: When my husband and I were dating he would sometime take me to his little apartment at the beach. They call it Caracas, but the town is about an hour drive away, so there are very limited options at the beach. He would bring these amazing pastas – he said they were pumpkin, but I think they were more likely some sort of squash ravioli from some little old lady who made tons of varieties of pasta and exquisite chocolate mousse. Having that perfectly sweet and savory ravioli with the man of my dreams? The thought of it still makes my eyes roll back up into my head.
I have memories of attempting to eat spaghetti at Italian restaurants and always making a huge mess, I quickly learned to save spaghetti for home and to order penne in restaurants to avoid being covered in sauce!
Sounds wonderful. I did make the Martha pasta ages ago and liked it a lot. But for some reason it didn’t get into the “rotation”. But anything with lemon, and I’m in.
Cold sesame noodles that I would get with my girl friend and now my wife in college.
My favorite pasta memory is probably falling asleep in my mother’s famous spaghetti after a long day playing outside as a kid. What a pillow!
The most amazing pasta I’ve ever had was at Le Coryllis, an Italian restaurant in Paris. I’ve been sightseeing all day with my friend, our feet were sore, and we were starving! When we tucked into the simplest of pasta dishes, it was SO amazing. We where basically doing a silent version of the diner scene from ‘When Harry met Sally’. It was that good!
I was a super picky eater as a kid, so my mom made my favorite food – pasta con broccoli, and I would ask her to put in all the broccoli and mushrooms, but then I’d around them! Then I grew up, learned to love my vegetables, and I still make pasta con broccoli whenever I’m feeling homesick (and eat it all now, haha).
My favorite pasta memory comes from the summer after my senior year of high school. My girlfriend and I made pappardelle from scratch, along with a simple summer tomato sauce with fresh basil, in the kitchen of a home were she was housesitting. We ate it on the screened back porch.
Good times, good times.
My favorite pasta memories are pasta parties with my cross country team where 30 runners would gather in one house and eat boatloads of pasta before meets. It was always a night filled with excitement and nerves for the next day’s competition.
My grandmother made the absolute best Italian spaghetti sauce in the world, which we all laughed about because she was 100% Polish! She has been gone for 15 years, but I still make that recipe all the time because it is SO good and it makes me think of her. I love that my fiance loves it too – he never got to meet either of my grandparents so it makes me happy that he has gotten to know them through food :)
I remember learning to make a simple tomato sauce at school in home ec and then coming home excited about it and having my mom help make it that same night.
I made a great mac and cheese with my boyfriend. One of the best meals I’ve had.
My favorite pasta memory comes from when I first started cooking five years ago. Until then, I had been a bachelorette – eating frozen burritos for dinner most nights. When I started dating my now-husband, I became more ambitious and interested in food. One winter night I got the nerve to make linguine with clams )one of our favorite dishes) all on my own. It turned out great and we had a lovely dinner. I couldn’t believe I’d made such a delicious pasta dish myself. I’ve loved cooking ever since!
hands down, best memory of pasta is spending time over the stove with my grandmother on Sunday’s, waiting for the water to boil. She only ever called it macaroni, and only ever referred to “sauce” as “gravy.” She would remind me always, “watching pots never boil!” sadly she passed away last year, this memory will forever hold a special place in my heart <3
That time when my mom improvised and made dan dan noodles with spaghetti – that woman can seriously make anything delicious.
my favorite memory of pasta would hands down be spending time over the stove on sundays with my Grandma Stella. She would only refer to pasta as macaroni, and sauce as gravy. She’d remind us all- “watching pots never boil!.” Spending time in the kitchen with her is some of the most precious memories I have of her, as she sadly passed away last year. I will forever remember, to not watch the pot, or it won’t ever boil!
xox
My favorite pasta memory is that we called them “noodles” growing up, because “pasta” was too fancy-pants.
My wife and I have always tried to dabble in making fresh pasta, and I feel like we’re finally getting to a point where it becomes almost second nature. On the other hand, we were met with many disastrous results when we were dating and making fresh pasta, enough to where we wanted to catalogue them by way of our engagement pictures so that they are forever recorded for us!
One of my first dates with my now husband was making a meal of shrimp fettuccine alfredo together!
When I was little my mom, as a recent immigrant from Vietnam, would try to recreate things she had tried in restaurants with varying degrees of success. My favorite, by far, was her version of spaghetti, which she would mispronounce as super-getti. She would throw garlic, onions, and cooked pasta into a giant wok, squirt in ketchup and sriracha, and toss until everything was kinda crispy and caramelized. I didn’t actually realize my mom’s “super-getti” wasn’t proper spaghetti until well into high school!
Two years ago my husband and I joined our daughter and family in Montefalco, Italy, for a day trip to enjoy the small town and surrounding country side with many vineyards and olive groves. We sat with owner and family in one of the vineyards sampling their wines and olive oils with plates of pasta, containing beautiful mushrooms grown in that region, olive oil and pasta made by the owner’s mother. It was a special day and unforgettable. We, of course, had to bring some of the wine and olive oil home to South Carolina, to see if we could recreate our wonderful meal.
My husband and I figured we would do our last-minute best at making a Chinese New Year dinner after picking up ingredients after the local school’s dragon dance. He had just perfected his udon noodle ratios and we made 7 foot long noodles. As people arrived we would hand them a bowl with just one noodle in stock. I had jokingly told my sister-in-law that she couldn’t break the noodle and she sure tried! At the end of the night my husband told them how if they ate two bowls they consumed more than 12 feet of noodle. It blew some minds.
I also found out how much I love pomelos that night and now I want one every single day.
I love your site! My favorite pasta memory is not elegant, to be sure, but it is very much a point of nostalgia for myself and my sister. When I was in elementary school, my parents bought a house and were left with very little money. To deal with this, they made dinners at home every night, and we enjoyed cheap staples like English muffin pizzas, creamed tuna on toast, and spaghetti o’s. The best (and cheapest, I’m sure) meal of the week was tuna fish casserole. I cannot tell you how many times we had this, but remember looking in the oven at the bubbly, cheesy topping and making sure that there was enough for us to have a second, or third, bowl of it. Oh, those were the days!
I loved learning to make pasta from scratch from my Nana. She was always so patient and calm explaining that it’s an art not a science when I kept asking about specific measurements instead of “feel”.
My wife and I fell in love with a simple date-night dish that is fennel sausage with chives and linguine pasta. Sauté sausage in olive oil allowing caramelization and ‘crispy bit’ formation. Add cooked linguine (we have done it with homemade and store-bought – both delicious). Pile in the fresh chives with a touch of red chili flakes. Now serve and top with the good extra virgin olive oil.
Hooray for scallops and pasta!!
My son LOVES cheese!! According to him, there’s no such thing as too much cheese. The first time I made mac and cheese, he declared it the best thing he’s ever eaten. To this day, every year on his birthday, I make him mac and cheese. He is now 20 years old and he still thinks I’m the best mommy ever! :)
I loved spaghetti night as a kid. All those yummy carbs! We would always have spaghetti, jarred sauce and buttery garlic bread. I especially liked the ends of the baguette. I would scoop out the center of the bread, leaving the crust and plop in some of the spaghetti from my plate. Next, I would sprinkle on some parm cheese and gobble it up. A mini bread bowl! I thought it was such a tasty good idea that I declared I would open a restaurant that served this creation. Maybe someday…
My favorite pasta memory is my mom’s homemade spaghetti. Homemade sauce with fresh garden tomatoes and herbs with homemade meatballs. Best comfort food ever!
Definitely when I hand rolled fresh pappardelle and paired it with a bolognese sauce. It was a painstakingly, rewarding process that ended with the silkiest pasta I’ve ever had!
My favorite pasta memory is the time I fell asleep, face down, in a full plate of spaghetti. I was a very tired child and frequently fell asleep mid-meal at the dinner table. There’s video evidence of me trying to stay awake but eventually giving way to that ever precious sleep. The best part, my parents assumed I would wake up the second my face hit the plate….nope. They had to jostle me awake. I was out!
My favorite pasta memory is my parent’s homemade chicken noodle soup. My dad would make the chicken and stock while my mom makes the noodles. I was allowed to start helping at about 7. It was so much to roll out the dough and then use the electric knife to cut them all into strips after the dough has dried. Now I love making this recipe with my own kids!
I’m not huge into pasta, but… I love some red meat sauce. Yum. I’ll eat it on spaghetti squash, bread, on broccoli… yum yum yum!
This looks so amazing. My favorite pasta memory is the spaghetti dinner my friend hosted for me prior to running my first marathon! It was kind of like a spaghetti bar…with different sauces and veggies to add, and she invited my family and friends (none of whom were running with me) but it made me feel so supported. And all those carbs definitely helped me rock that marathon!
When we started dating, the first meal my boyfriend ever made me was spaghetti and meatballs on Valentines day. So instead of going out and battling to get a reservation at a restaurant every year. we stay in and make a delicious dish of spaghetti and giant meatballs!
Favorite pasta memory was making carbonara for the first time. It was my friend’s idea, so we met at her place to make it. Everything was pretty smooth-going and delicious-smelling, until we had to combine the egg mixture with the pasta and bacon. My friend was like, “don’t stop stirring!” while she poured the egg, “don’t let it curdle!!!!!” It was fun :) and to this day it’s probably one of my fave pasta dishes – can’t go wrong with garlic and bacon!
my favorite pasta moment was having fresh pappardelle pasta for the first time! now i have to order anytime i see it on the menu.
My first pot was an aluminum piece with a plastic handle that would crack after the third use, but before it did I remember watching a frothy mix of water and starchy spaghetti swirl while I stood barefoot on the cold grimy tiles of a shared dormitory kitchen. I was nineteen and I’d made the impulsive choice to go to college overseas after my high-school girlfriend told me we should both be excited to break up and meet new people. I’d never really cooked for myself, or done anything for myself. The spaghetti softened. I managed to pour out the water and hold the pasta in the pot with a fork. I dumped a can of tuna on top of it and added a slice of processed cheese. I mixed it around, took it back to my dorm room and ate it right out of the pot with someone else’s fork. I didn’t know anyone and I didn’t know the language. And I knew that I was going to be okay.
one favorite pasta memory? impossible! every pasta dish with family is a fabulous memory!
I still have yet to try the one pot pasta phenomenon, but this is inspiring!! So my favorite pasta memory has to be the night a couple years ago when my then boyfriend suggested we stay in and make a big dinner together. This was unusual for him, because he doesn’t like to cook. I love to cook, so I was, of course, all in. So we made a delish lasagne with meat sauce and after dinner he got down on his knee and proposed. Best pasta memory.
All of my memories from when I am very young with my great grandmother involve her making ravioli and pasta sauce. Every time my mother makes her sauce recipe I am immediately brought back to those times. Love you grandma!
My mom made her awesome, super simple spaghetti carbonara after she finished her course of radiation for breast cancer. It was one of the first times she was “herself” after the whole cancer spiel and it sucked us right back into normalcy. She adds lemon zest because that’s what you do in SoCal. Love the pasta, love the feel goodery.
This looks great, can’t wait to try it!
My favorite pasta memory is the comfort food pasta dish my mom would make me as a kid – pasta with yogurt (coat spaghetti with butter, add yogurt/garlic/dried mint). Most people say it sounds kind of gross but it was my absolute favorite meal when I was little! I recently remembered it and had my mom show me how to make it. It’ll always bring me back to being a little kid :’)
Making ravioli all’uovo for my (now) husband’s birthday as a surprise. I spent all day making homemade dough and getting the yolks to sit just right in their little nests. Right before I was about to toss them in the water, my cat jumped into the fridge right onto my fragile little ravioli and punctured a few, sending egg yolks exploding everywhere. Luckily, we were able to salvage some and it was definitely a memorable pasta occasion that makes me laugh looking back on it.
One of my favorite pasta memories is the time my boyfriend and i tried to make homemade pasta in college. Half way through the process, we realized that we didn’t have a rolling pin … so we had to get a little creative! we use metal water bottles and wine bottles to make it work. It ended up tasting pretty decent, just a little thick! ha!
One time my boyfriend and I were feeling lazy about cooking but wanted some indulgent comfort food. We decided on the obvious choice of mac and cheese, but since we were being lazy, we decided we would doctor up some boxed mac and cheese. In an attempt to make our boxed dinner “fancy”, we mixed two different flavors of mac (alfredo and aged cheedar) but that wasn’t enough cheese for us… We then decided that it would be a good idea to grate up and throw in all the random bits of cheese in our fridge (5 kinds). It ended up being too much; there were way too many flavors of cheese happening. We tried to salvage it with some cooked bacon and broccoli but the cheese continued to overpower anything else we added. By this point, we had spent more time and effort fixing up the boxed stuff than making it from scratch. We did eat our creation and suffered the stomach aches we deserved from going overboard on the cheese. Now we always laugh when we see “5 cheese mac and cheese” or something similar on restaurant menus because we now know that you can have too many kinds of cheese on your mac.
Spaghetti with marinara was probably the first thing I learned to make on my own when I was little. Practicing over time helped me to refine my tastes and technique and create my ultimate comfort food.
Wow, choosing a favorite pasta memory is really hard, especially because my mom is from Italy so pasta is a big part of my diet! I’d have to choose a memory I had this summer, when I was visiting my uncle and aunt in Livorno, Italy. In the morning, we went to the fish market and bought the freshest fish from his friend the fisherman. When we got back home, my uncle prepared the absolute best pasta I’ve ever had. It was a calamarata-shape pasta with scallops, fish, and clams in a very very light tomato sauce with a touch of cream. Calamarata is a pasta shape like a segment of a pacchero, or like a smooth mezze manico. The smooth rings of pasta held the sauce and the small chunks of fish, and they were big enough to provide really satisfying bites. I loved it so much that I bought the calamarata pasta shape, which is difficult to find here in the US, and I am biding my time until I find seafood that will be able to hold a candle to what I tasted on the Tuscan coast.
Ooh, I LOVE this post, Stephanie! Your photos are perfection, and one-pot pasta?! Amazingness!!
My favorite pasta memory… hmmm…
When I was around eight or nine years old my family and I went out to this fancy Italian restaurant (I don’t remember the name). I ordered plain pasta with some sort of garlic butter sauce and OMG! It was so good. I just remember having an amazing time with my lil bros, parents, and my cousin. <3
Thank you so much for the give away. My favorite pasta memory is learning for the first time that keeping the pasta water to dilute the sauce makes all the difference! I think in a way that is similar to the one-pot pasta concept in that you are using the starchy juices. A must try!
My first ever pasta memory would have been when I went to a birthday party in my early teens and it was at the Cheesecake Factory. All the girls were RAVING about the four-cheese pasta, so I was extremely intrigued. Upon tasting it, it blew my mind. Especially the soft ricotta. Funny though because ever since they started showcasing their calories, I have never gone back but I will never forget that pasta moment!
It has to be ravioli I ate in Italy. It was a cheese ravioli with a wonderful meat sauce. I’ve never forgotten it.
All the handmade pastas I’ve made with family and friends. And the delicious braised short ribs or lamb to go on top.
My favorite pasta memory is my mom packing a large serving of red sauce spaghetti with a ton of sauteed veggies for lunch. I would open up my thermos and it would still be slightly warm and the thought of what I had for lunch would make me anticipate eating it while in class.
My favorite pasta memory is from when my boyfriend and I took an Italian cooking class together. We are both inexperienced cooks (but not terrible), so it was a lot of fun to learn a recipe and have the chef right there to give us tips!
My mom and grandma make a HK-style macaroni and pork (or beef) kind of noodle soup. They would feed it to us as an after school snack or when we were sick, etc. To this day I still crave the macaroni soup and always feel a little nostalgic and sad when I get sick and realize I’m a grown-up who doesn’t live at home anymore and so must make my own macaroni soup.
my mom makes a town-famous pasta sauce – best part is, the base is prego so i can make it myself even while living across the country from her :)
the le creuset braiser looks beautiful, i was just looking for a braiser this weekend to try smitten kitchen’s braised beef with tomatoes and garlic and would love this one!
My favorite pasta memory is of making ravioli with my grandfather when I was a little girl. I used to pull up a chair to stand on (since I was too short to reach the counter on my own) and help him mix the dough and fill the pasta with cheese or meat. My grandfather would always give me a piece of the dough to create whatever I wanted with it. He truly nurtured my love of food and cooking by letting me be messy and creative in the kitchen. He taught me that food will always taste great if it’s made with love and shared with family and friends.
The first meal I ever cooked for my family was pasta. I was about seven and I made Mollie Katzen’s recipe for Green Spaghetti from her cookbook for kids. About two thirds of the way through the process of cooking it, I realized that Green Spaghetti was the same thing as pasta with pesto — a food I had sworn that I hated. When we sat down to ate, I was so proud of my work that I found myself enthusiastically eating my green pasta.
When I was younger, my favorite dish was “chicken spaghetti stir fry” which was really stir fried vegetables and chicken mixed with pasta and a ginger/garlic/Parmesan “sauce.” Sounds a little weird, but I loved it then, and I still do now! My grandma would always make it for me and serve it in the coolest turquoise serving bowl that I now have and serve the pasta in whenever I make it.
My most favorite pasta moment was making spaghetti and meatballs for my boyfriend (now husband). It was our first Valentines Day together in high school and I never made a meal from scratch (or should I say, this was the first meal I ever made!) I used my grandmothers recipe for the meat balls and I kind of winged the sauce. It turned out very garlicky, and very delicious. : )
This looks super tasty!
My favorite pasta memory is probably watching my mom make homemade noodles for some of the best turkey-noodle soup on the planet. She makes thick semolina noodles and they’re the best!
Eating gnocchi (potato pasta counts, right?!) when studying abroad in Italy for the first time. Can’t be beat.
My fondest memory of pasta has to be when I got it into my mind that I wanted to make burrata ravioli from scratch. It took way way longer than I expected to roll out the dough and actually assemble them. My boyfriend jumped in to help me with it and I still remember how much fun it was just hanging out and laughing while we made them. In the end they turned out delicious and it turned out to be well worth the effort!
My favorite pasta memory was learning how to plate pasta for photographs, in the nice little spiraled whorls from the tongs. So beautiful! Ahh food blogging days…I miss them sometimes, but most of the time I’m glad I get to eat without photographing first!
My favorite pasta memory is making fresh pasta for the first time. Flour everywhere, irregular noodle size, just a giant mess. But it ended up being delicious and fun anyway.
Your shots are so killer. You inspire me always
I had a fantastic bowl of fettucine with asparagus and panchetta in Firenze this past summer. It was a wonderful, small restaurant and the dish was so fresh, so simple, and so satisfying.
My favorite pasta memory is having a bowl of my dad’s famous (within the family) angel hair pasta with seafood. I don’t really like angel hair pasta because it is too thin for my liking – with the exception of my dad’s dish. He would toss it in a light, home-made tomato sauce, with fresh shrimp and crab meat with lots of basil and some fresh chili peppers for a little kick. He would make a huge pot of this and my siblings and I would devour the entire thing. So yummy!
My favorite pasta memory was cooking with my friend at my condo during undergrad. I wasn’t sure if the spaghetti was done yet, so my friend literally just picked one noodle out of the hot water and threw it against the wall to see if it stuck! It totally did. And then, sure enough, there were 5 more noodles sticking against the wall because we are six year olds at heart.
I grew up in Asia, so my only notion of pasta as a child was kraft mac & cheese, which my aunt who lived in the U.S would bring us during her visits. My mom’s version had no butter and was slightly watery. It might sound gross to some but that’s still the way I make mine now. It was a rare treat and I loved it. So it was fitting that one of the first meals I made for my husband after we got married was mac & cheese, straight out of a kraft box. I had been saving the box for a special occasion, believe it or not. I also had the impression that these things kept forever, so I was a bit shocked to find out, right after I had strained the pasta, the box I was using had expired more than 3 years ago. Of course I proceeded to serve it to both of us. Aside from a slight cardboard box taste it was fine. We are both still alive. I’ve since expanded my pasta repertoire and can’t wait to try this recipe!
My favorite memories of pasta are from when I studied abroad in Rome for a semester during college. We had a cafeteria on our campus, which we called “la mensa.” The cooks who ran the kitchen were a sweet old Italian mom & dad named Nino and Nuncia. They were the sweetest, most wonderful people who loved to dote on the students by nicknaming us (mine was “pesche” or peach because of my round face) and spoiling us with amazing food. They cooked pasta for us twice a day for lunch and dinner, and I ate it for four months. My face was even more a “pesche” when I left. Nino and Nuncia gradually caught on to how much I loved their food and invited me in their kitchen to watch them cook…. which ended up in a crash course in how to make all sorts of sauces. The only problem was is that I spoke limited Italian, and they spoke limited English. But somehow, we both understood each other, and I’ll never forget standing over the steaming pots while they showed me how to properly make carbonara.
One rainy Sunday I made a creamy one pot garlic and olive oil pasta dish for me and my family. It was so cozy and comforting to enjoy the hot and creamy dish on the couch together.
The day I discovered simple pasta sauce using san marzano tomatoes, a little olive oil and garlic. The memory of awful dorm food pasta has been forever erased, LOL.
Awesome giveaway! My favorite pasta memory has to be when I discovered that I could actually make baked macaroni and cheese from scratch! Of course I researched tirelessly for the best recipe and came across an oldie but goodie fannie farmer recipe. I made this incredible cheese sauce and have never looked back! Since that day I was crowed the queen of backed mac and cheese from my family and I’ve been trying to reinvent the recipe ever since as it is now a staple item on the menu during all our holiday dinners!
The first time my baby girl had spaghetti and meat sauce (homemade of course) is my absolute favorite pasta-related memory. We let her eat in her diaper and at the end of the meal, she was wearing an entire spaghetti sauce’d outfit. I wish I could enjoy spaghetti that way…oh the tragedies of being an adult!
My favorite pasta memory is making spaghetti mozzarella stuffed meatballs for a large group of friends.
I come from a New-Jersian Italian mother (and a slovakian father!). Growing up every single Sunday was “Gravy day” and then we’d have it again on Wednesday. Of course I LOVE pasta, but when I was little… I didn’t always want it! So my mom made gnocchi pretty often, and we called them “sinkers” because they feel like they sink to the bottom of your stomach. Well one Sunday, mama made sinkers and I just wasn’t having it. So when they weren’t paying attention, I started flinging them up to the ceiling. I only got a few out of my bowl, when they caught on (how wise they are.) But when my mom saw what was happening, she asked me what on earth I was doing. And I said “look! Sinkers on the ceiling!” She laughed, and my dad poured me another helping. Thankfully now I will HAPPILY scarf all the gnocchi and then some.
My favorite pasta memory is learning to make handmade fettuccine and pappardelle with my mom and grandma in the kitchen my mom grew up in. I remember rolling out the dough and running it through the hand-cranked pasta maker. I remember it being the best pasta I’d ever had. I still use that recipe!
I could really really use that Braiser pretty badly, so I hope I’m the random winner! I love this blog and make your yakiudon all. the. time!
Thanks!
My sister and I tried cooking pasta together for the first time, and everything was just not going in our favor. I guess we should’ve check available ingredients… and whether anything had molded. -__-;
My favorite pasta memory was watching Ina Garten make her lemon and garlic shrimp pasta on tv. It was before I had ever started cooking anything and this was my first inspiration! I asked my mother to take me to the grocery store, I bought the ingredients, and made my first dish that nice. The pasta was so easy and light, it made me fall in love with a new hobby!
Pasta has always played a big part in family meals at my house. From childhood I’ve been a spaghetti fiend! When I was little we went to disney and I ate spaghetti the entire week for almost every meal! No regrets!
Absolutely love the recipe and the photos and would be the happiest little busy bee if I won that Creuset brasier. Now how to choose my favorite pasta memory. Not an easy task when you’re married to an Italian. But maybe it would be when I first moved to Italy like 10yrs ago as a study abroad student. I lived in the beautiful town of L’Aquila. My house was in the old city center just outside of the “corso” the main Street. It was there that I first attempted to make homemade pasta. And being an over achiever I attempted to make ravioli. To say that I failed miserably would be an understatement. But my boyfriend at the time was kind enough to eat the meal without judging. I’d say he gave me an “A” for effort. I still have happy memories of that dish, that day, that period in time despite the culinary disaster.
Oh heavens, that recipe looks amazing. That’ll be going on my dinner menu asap.
My favorite pasta memory is when my dad taught me how to make lasagna when I was little. What a mess! He’s always so particular about recipes and teaching an 8-year-old how to fold together the ricotta and cheeses was probably a pain. But I was so proud of myself to have cooked the pasta perfectly and then the cheese on top burned, my dad very sweetly scraped it off and put a fresh layer to be cooked under HIS supervision haha. Lasagna is always a great memory for me and my dad.
My first and most vivid pasta experience was in middle school home ec class. We were taught to throw the spaghetti on the wall to check its doneness. Truth be told I still do it til this day!
The first meal I cooked for my husband when he finally got his green card and moved to NY: spaghetti with spinach/white bean/tomato sauce and blue cheese.
Pasta has always been a staple for me, especially in college because it was quick and easy. Before moving out to an apartment, I lived on campus, which means DINING HALLS. At one particular dining hall, they would make a pasta dish to order with your choice of sauce, veggies and cheese. My favorite was always an all green looking pasta with spinach, broccoli, asparagus and a pesto cream sauce. After moving off campus, I couldn’t help but want to recreate that dish with my roommates. We all remembered how delicious it was. So we spent a night trying to do whatever we could to make it happen. The result was a thick (but still edible!) goop of pasta and veggies. The sauce was way too thick but it was fun to try and just to hang out with friends reminiscing over the terribly not terrible dining hall dish.
Growing up in a Filipino household, our spaghetti was always sweeter with hot dogs in it. Once we moved to America, my mom still made incredible spaghetti but it didn’t have the same flavor since we couldn’t find banana ketchup. I’ve always known spaghetti/pasta to be what my mom made and that other families ate canned pasta sauce so I didn’t realize how delicious red sauce could be when made from scratch!
I’ve created pasta sauce from scratch for a few years but now I crave my mom’s spaghetti and have never attempted to make it. Since I grew up with her cooking it and I’ve moved away, I guess it’s time for me to try and recreate it. I think my favorite pasta memory will be when I see her next time and ask her to teach me how to make it :)
Seeing the dining room table covered with homemade raviolis that my aunt and grandmother made from scratch–huge ravioli filled with sausage and swiss chard.
Yumm! Can’t wait to try this. I have sooo many great pasta memories, it’s actually hard to choose. My favorite is probably from a few years ago, at my grandparents’ house at the beach. My grandma taught me and my sisters how to make gnocchi – my favorite – from scratch. Something about clearing off a whole table or counter and getting flour all over the place to roll the dough is so much fun. And then we did what we do best- eat!
Angel hair pasta, pan seared scallops in lemon garlic basil sauce. It was the first dish my now husband made me on our first date!
My favorite pasta memory is when I made it with my niece and nephew. It was great seeing a ten and seven year old putting so much effort in making fresh dough and rolling it. The joy on my niece’s face when her spaghetti came out right. I wish I could attach a picture. But I have had some amazing pasta dishes, but one made by such innocence and love always end up tasting well.
My favorite pasta memory is having maccheroni alla mugnaia at Le Virtu in Philadelphia. The entire dish is actually composed of one giant 6ft long noodle! It’s toothy and chewy and delicate with such a delicious buttery flavor. The pasta itself is so flavorful that it only needs a very modest and simple sauce – olive oil, garlic, various hot peppers (plus more on the side served in a cute basket with a pair of scissors, for you to add yourself!), and garnished with parsley and pecorino. It was spicy and simple and delicious! I’m a big proponent of letting quality ingredients speak for themselves, so when something can be executed so simply and flawlessly, I’m sure to remember it for a long time!
Best pasta memory is from growing up in California in an immigrant family and seeing someone on TV make lasagna for the first time. My mom and I decided to make it and went and bought the flat noodles, ricotta cheese, etc, but forgot the basil, so we added whatever herb we had around the house (and some soy sauce to the tomato sauce, for you know, flavor). And covered it with cheese. So fun!
Lasagna is always a go to for me. If I see it, I want it. Just like you, Garfield was my inspiration!
Favorite pasta memory goes back almost 50 years….watching my italian grandmother make home-made pasta in her tiny apartment kitchen. She would lay out clean sheets on any flat suface she could find…beds, tables etc, and and place the pasta to dry. There was spaghetti/fettuccine and ravioli all over the apartment.
My mom was not the greatest cook, in my memory. But somehow her spaghetti was a family favorite, including me and my picky eating habits. I’m pretty sure it was just a can of mushrooms mixed with jar or canned tomato sauce, and maybe a little oregano or something… but we all loved it! I even tried recreating it when I first moved out on my own. Time has passed, mom is gone, and I have become a relatively decent cook in my old age! At least that’s what my family tells me :) Would put that braiser to good use for sure!
My favorite pasta memory was a dish I had in a hole-in-the-wall place in Paris. I wish I could remember the name of that place so that I could go back someday. Anyway, it was fresh, homemade pasta (tagliatelle), dressed in very fruity, delicious olive oil, dusted with Parmesan cheese, and completely covered in thinly shaved black truffles. It was the first time I had fresh truffles and I have been in love ever since. The simplest dishes are the best when working with such high quality ingredients.
Looks so wonderful Stephanie! I’ve got to say my favourite pasta memory was in Florence when I went to cuatro leoni with my mum and she was telling me that they had a crazy delicious pear and asparagus pasta dish and I was like WHAAAT NO but I tried it and it was so heavenly: creamy asparagus sauce with pear ravioli: sweetness encased in fresh pasta with gratings of parmesan: amazing!
I think the first pasta memory THAT comes to my mind is the day I saw the movie the Lady and the Tramp… I know, It was a long time ago, but This was the first time as a Child, That I felt the urge to Eat pasta and to learn how to cook it…. Heheh years later I was having fun trowing the spaghetti to the wall to check If It was al dente, and attempted to make spaguetti bolognese. I was so proud at my self, my first bowl of pasta with long long noodles and red meaty tomatoeay sauce…. Mmmm powdery parmessan…since I did not have the profound knowledge of parmigiano regiano… And Yes, probably was a bit over cooked heheh but to me It tasted so good and gave me the same cozy feeling than the avene of the movie. : )
My favorite memory was making fresh pasta with my dad. He was making his famous sauce that took hours. He said no need to fuss, just use dry pasta. I said, if your taking the time to make this sauce, I can make fresh pasta. We all agreed, the fresh pasta elevated the dish.
One day I was struggling to come up with ideas for dinner. I had just started dating this beautiful young woman and wanted to do nothing more than to impress her. I had previously made some delicious parchment wrapped fish and mushrooms with a soy ginger sauce. We both loved the fresh healthy taste. Now I was tasked with stepping my game up another notch to keep her impressed with my culinary abilities. After trolling the internet for hours I decided I was going to attempt to make my own Gnocchi. After lots a research… started boiling potatoes. Having a Sicilian grandfather and a mother whom knows here way around the kitchen made me into the savvy cook I am today. After allowing the potatoes to cool I added the flour and started to slightly kneed the dough. Rolling it out into 3/4″ round strips and chopping that into 1″ pieces. Honestly, other than making a mess with flour, these are quite easy to make. I then threw them in boiling water. The key is once they float to the top to remove them as they are ready to eat. I made a quick sauce and we had an amazing dinner. To this day she was/is impressed with my Gnocchi and now we are passionately in love with the desire to wed.
As an asian american, I don’t necessarily have that many “pasta memories”, but there was one time in my life that pasta really brought the whole family together.
It must have been about 15 years ago, and my family had gotten adventurous in their cooking, probably because my parents had gone to Italy the year before that.
So one night, my dad decides that he wants to cook pasta putanesca. Being the late 90s/early 00s, the emphasis on home cooked and good ingredients was not as popular as it is today. And we probably didn’t have internet, so he was really just winging it.
Into the pot went the putanesca sauce, which was storebought and just a jar of tomato sauce with capers and olives, another jar of sliced black pearl olives, and then chicken drumsticks. Sounds appetizing right? Well things were just getting started…
We dig into the meal, and my brother and I are not impressed. Looking back, he must have left a little too much of that olive juice from the canned olives, and it made the sauce so bitter. We also had no idea what capers were, so these little bursts of briny flavor were not what we wanted in our spaghetti. Our parents are there, telling us to just eat up and that it’s good for us, when one of us takes a bite out of a drumstick, only to see bright pink staring back at us.
My dad has owned a restaurant, he’s cooked as long as I can remember, and he’s also pretty good at it. But he is also stubborn. So he wouldn’t accept that these drumsticks were undercooked. He kept telling everyone at the table “don’t worry, it’s just pink because we cooked it in the sauce”. So we eat this meal up as good children do when they’re told, and everything is fine.
We go to bed, and probably simultaneously, everyone gets up at 3 or 4 in the morning. Some of us are throwing up, some are running into the bathroom to use the toilet, it’s completely disgusting in the room my brother and I shared. We were in a bunkbed at the time, and there was definitely a drip involved…
To be honest, I don’t think anyone has had a putanesca dish since… and while it’s not the happiest memory in the world, it’s pretty funny in my book.
I went camping and we made spaghetti for dinner. Just basic spaghetti with jarred sauce and pre-made meatballs. It was good, as everything is good when you’re camping. The next day, we reheated it in a pan so that the sauce was kinda dry and sticking to the pasta and it was… so amazing. Again, we were camping, so who knows how good it was, but that reheated pasta was some of the best I’ve ever had.
My favorite pasta memory is sitting at my grandma’s table while she rolled out sheets of pasta for home made raviolis. I was in awe at how a mountain of flour and egg could come together into a mass and make sheets of noodles. I helped how I could which meant sitting there talking to her and asking her questions. She would combine the ricotta and spinach and I would be in charge of mixing it. It took some serious arm power for me. Then she would dot the long ribbons of pasta and seal them with her hand roller sealer which I thought was fascinating, I loved the squiggley edges. After that she save them for dinner or place them on a cookie sheet to freeze. Grandma Rose knew she was sick but hated going to the doctor. Once she was diagnosed with leukemia – and unbeknownst to her children – she set to work making the largest stockpile of raviolis. Towards the end, my dad told me while they were at her death bed she left very specific instructions on how she wanted the entire family to get together and eat her raviolis that she had frozen one last time and share our happiest memories of her. It was so bitter sweet and to this day, I’ve never been able to master her recipe but I guess that’s true for most cooks. It never tastes as good as mom’s/grandma’s/dad’s/etc.
My best pasta memory has been learning to make my Mom’s lasagna. She adds a couple of interesting ingredients like olives and shredded chicken, but the completed product comes out amazing: cheesy, saucy, and full of love.
My favorite pasta memory just happened this week! My fiancee got me the pasta attachment that fits on her Kitchenaid mixer, so we attempted to make spaghetti. We rolled out the dough to the recommended thickness for spaghetti and then ran it through the cutter. What I got was extremely THIN flat noodles. I cooked them for the hell of it, and when I took them out they were like the noodles from Cup O’ Noodles! It wasn’t great pasta but it was nostalgic anyhow.
Favourite pasta memory – So tricky to choose one! I think it has to be going back home to Bangkok (from New York) to visit my family and going to a family Brunch gathering with a DIY pasta stall. There was marinara, alfredo, pesto sauce but in true Thai fashion there was a ‘Spagetti Kee Mao’ which is simply the option to blend spagettii, garlic, oil, thai basil, thai chillies, more thai chillies, peppercorns, shrimp, and some red pepper (and I added some mushrooms). Minus the cooking of the noodles it was all made in one “WOK” to let the flavours blend together. Simple ingredients, addictive pasta, mouth on fire – a great welcome home!
My favorite pasta memory is eating gluten-free pasta for the first time and marveling over how amazing it tasted!
My most found memory of pasta was creating Mount Pesto overflowing with a clear lethargic liquid seeping from a yellow core. Diving in with hands first, the sensation of slightly cold liquid of protein and carbohydrates was the first sign of addiction. I started to add pureed spinach in mounds to my dough to mimic the green mountain i had always dreamed of, except this one was only 3 or 4 inches tall. Flatenning the great green beast was not much of a challenge with a large rolling pin and pasta maker. Cutting and boiling the green strips of long flour covered pasta lead to the best tasting pesto i had created. Creamy, nutty, and somewhat fragrant was what i tasted as the culmination of eggs, flour, and herbs were slurped into my mouth. I will never forget the moment pasta led me down the road of tirelessly creating different colors and sizes. It was like sculpting, but for not only observing but for eating.
Mine would have to be the first time I made pasta from scratch! It really opened up a new door for me when it comes to home cooking and gave me the courage to try other things I felt intimated by in the kitchen!
My favorite pasta memory is absolutely when I tried fresh pasta for the first time, maybe 5 years ago now?! My life completely changed, and I fell in love with food.
I’ve had a long history with spaghetti. It was my favorite dinner meal since before I could pronounce it properly. Early childhood pronunciations of spaghetti came out as “spuzghetti”. Anytime my mom would ask me what I wanted for dinner, the answer was always spaghetti. For birthday dinners, for restaurant meals, always the same, I wanted spaghetti. I even fell asleep in a plate filled with spaghetti at the dinner table once, true story.
As I grew up, spaghetti in some form stayed with me. It was the easy meal I would make for myself when my mom worked late nights, or the inexpensive meal I made in college on my student’s budget. Spaghetti was also my gateway into learning to cook and developing a passion for it. I started small, by sauteing some fresh vegetables and adding them into my store bought sauce. This segued into making my own sauce and homemade meatballs.
Today, I still love spaghetti and will not hesitate to order a plate of spaghetti and meatballs when at my favorite Italian restaurant. I still love spaghetti because it was the first meal that I loved. It was the first time I realized the coming together of ingredients could result in something amazing. Spaghetti brings me happy childhood memories and has ignited in me the passion I have for food today.
My favorite pasta memory is pretty simple: the first time I made pasta with pesto made from basil grown in my own backyard. I had had pesto before, but the moment I mixed the fresh, garlicky, lemony pesto with the hot pasta, I knew I was in for something special. I’ve made pesto a hundred times since then, and every time I am taken back to that lovely summer day.
My favorite pasta memory is making my favorite lasagna recipe, with Bolognese and béchamel sauces and parmesan cheese, and serving it to my whole family for Christmas dinner.
My favorite pasta memory take place at city island, a small island in the Bronx. My family and I would visit every summer and we would frequent this Italian restaurant. One of their specialty dishes is this seafood pasta dish that would come out on a huge plate, meant to be eaten family style. It incorporated all the freshest seafood in the area including clams, mussel, and lobster, in a thick tomato sauce cooked together with spaghetti. I can’t think of a better way to eat spaghetti. It’s still one of my favorite meals and every summer I long to go back.
My favorite pasta memory is only a few weeks old. I visited my sister who has the pasta attachment for the kitchenaid mixer. She got it as a wedding gift 10-years ago but never used it. Needless to say me and my 7-year old nephew made the world longest strands of pasta ever. Great memories forever.
the first time I ate cacio e pepe. it reaffirmed how simple pasta is the best pasta.
the first time I ate cacio e pepe. it reaffirmed that simple pasta is the best pasta.
I don’t have a favorite pasta memory, per se, but I have lots of fun memories–making homemade pasta with my husband for a totally from scratch lasagna is probably one of my favorite memories involving pasta
The first time I had true pasta carbonara is definitely my favorite pasta memory. I was part of an immersive language program in Genoa but took a trip to Rome for the 150th anniversary of the unification. It was a hot summer, the city was packed, and we were starving! but managed to find a tiny place that wasn’t too busy. I wasn’t super confident in my Italian yet so ordering at restaurants was still a little stressful for me but I’m pretty sure all of my language anxieties flew out the window after I started eating the GIANT plate of pasta that they brought me. I had to know how it was made! Peppery and perfectly rich, I’ve been trying to recreate it ever since! And think I’m getting close :)
My fave memory with pasta is eating home-made pasta with my host family in Florence, Italy when I studied abroad in college.
My favorite pasta memory (and there are many) is one where me and my mom cooked our first recipe together: tomato mozzarella rigatoni! It was a very simple recipe, but it was the first one where cooking was a collaboration between us, so it’s ingrained deeply in my mind :)
Thank you
My favorite recent pasta memory, was making your Caramelized Pork Belly Pasta for my brother and Mom last weekend! Three of us with very different likes/dislikes. As everyone dug in, it was sounds of slurping and oh my, oh this is the best, oh this is delicious, when can you make this again… zero leftovers :)
Yum, I’m salivating already. I’ve made a similar dish with clams many times, but scallops are a nice, fresh alternative. Thanks!
I have quite a few, growing up in an Italian house. But my favorite recent pasta memory was on my first trip back to New York after moving to LA. I went to Marea, by myself, on a spur of the moment trip and had a bowl of their amazing spaghetti with sea urchin and crab at the bar with a big glass of wine! It was the perfect meal on a gorgeous fall day as I watched all of the passers-by outside. I still look at the photo I took of that pasta on my phone!
I think my favorite pasta memory is making leftover pasta carbonara patties for breakfast. Read about it in a James Beard book somewhere.
My boyfriend is a catering chef, and one night a few months ago I was really craving carbonara, so I begged him to cook some for me. He insisted on putting in peas, which I thought was all wrong, and he used HALF A GALLON of heavy cream, plus an egg, plus about a pound of fresh Parmesan cheese, in the sauce. Then reduced it to about four or five servings. We ate less than a serving each and felt like we were going to die. It was SO heavy, but so delicious (he brought me around on the peas thing). We haven’t been able to even think about carbonara since then. I think the pot is still in the fridge because neither of us want to face it.
One of my favorite pasta memories is actually making a somewhat similar bay scallop past with a creamy sauce. Towards the end of college, I went up in the middle of winter with a couple very close high school friends and we picked up a ton of groceries, hung out, cooked together, and laughed all weekend. One of the things we threw together was a pasta with bay scallops cooked in cream sauce with saffron – it came together super quickly and deliciously with all of us contributing spontaneously – just like our friendship!
My favorite pasta memory is definitely the first time I made it from scratch with my grandmother. I couldn’t believe how easy it was once I got the hang of it. I definitely still use box pasta some of the time but fresh pasta is oh so delicious and a great treat!
The first time I made pasta from scratch – it took forever, and I loved every minute of it. (I’m much faster now!)
My earliest and most favourite pasta memory was at my mother’s Italian friend’s house. I couldn’t have been older than 6, but I remember watching her roll out fresh pasta dough and helping her stir the bolognese. It is my first cooking memory, and I have been wanting to make my own fresh pasta ever since. One day I’ll give it a try! I think I’ve mastered the bolognese though :) Thanks for the opportunity to look back on this great memory.
My favorite pasta memory is the first time i made a frittata. I had found a recipe somewhere for a spaghettii frittata, and i happened to have some leftover spaghetti (with homemade sauce), so i threw it into the egg mix and topped it with sea salt and rosemary. I ate it every day for, like, three weeks. I even made a fresh batch of pasta just so i could keep it going. That was five years ago, and it was still the best pasta dish i’ve ever made.
My husband works a lot. A LOT a lot. But there’s a place here in Seattle that we both have a real weakness for (Il Corvo) that is only open for lunch on weekdays, so we almost never get to go there… but a few times he’s been able to take an hour or two away from work and we always order one of everything (their menu changes daily and only has three dishes) and it’s always fun to be surprised by what comes out and spend a bit of surprise time together doing my favourite thing (eating).
my favorite pasta memory is of my mom’s birthday when I was 7 or 8 years old – I ordered a whole (adult size) plate of chicken alfredo and an entire slice of cheesecake – convinced my parents I could eat it all (which I did, even after they warned me about how ill I would be) – then promptly threw it ALL up the moment we got home. Weird thing to be such a good memory, but it’s my parent’s favorite example of how I’ve been stubborn since I was a little kid!
In our family, the kids always slurped the spaghetti while twisting their ears with their hands simultaneously, pretending it’s a mechanical process controlled by your ears. It’s a fun tradition I like to now partake with my little one.
i love making pasta!
My favorite pasta memory was making pasta in Spain with an Italian guy I met while traveling. He was so frustrated by the lack of the RIGHT olive oil. During the cooking process he taught me how to appropriately use Italian hand gestures and when we were all finished about about to eat he said to me, “You American, you’ll never be Italian.” Apparently I just couldn’t get the gestures right! We laughed and had the best pasta dinner!
Gnoicchi, lots of chesse and garlic. Yum! It was the night before my marathon and I wanted carbs carbs carbs. It was delicious and provided me with what I needed the next day.
My husband and I were visiting San Cristobál de las Casas in Chiapas Mexico. We had failed to book a hotel room in advance thinking it would be easy to find a room. We were wrong and thought we might have to spend the night in the bus station. Nevertheless, we still needed to eat dinner. We passed a teeny tiny restaurant with just a wooden few tables located in on a nondescript side street and decided to go for it. The cook was a gracious woman who served us an amazing dinner. The main course was delicious pasta with tomatoes and vegetables. The experience turned what could have been a bad travel story into one of my favorite travel memories (and we did find a place to stay in the end).
My favorite pasta memory is having seafood pasta on one of my first dates with my now husband.
I love spaghetti bolognese! I grew up eating it as a kid and now make it for my kids!
I used to make spaghetti for my family when I was growing up from crappy Costco sized jugs of tomato sauce, and added my own seasonings. These seasonings probably did nothing to make the pasta better. Still, my first forays into cooking, so it remains a fond memory.
My favorite pasta memory is pretty hilarious. My Italian friend had us over to her house for a small little get together before I moved out of the country. We had homemade legit Italian cheese ravioli with pesto sauce. The ravioli bits were very large, none of that American small sized ravioli business! I was pretty hungry and as soon as they brought it out I voiced my concern, “I don’t think that’s enough ravioli for all of us…” She said not to worry that we would all fill up and to trust her. About 40 mins later, I looked over to her and I said with a guilty-like conscious, “I sure hope there is more ravioli.” After that, all my friends burst out laughing and I enjoyed another heaping portion of delicious homemade meal :)
My grandma used to make us elbow macaroni with butter and gobs of Locatelli cheese when we visited her as kids. I thought she was genius and for the longest time it was the only way I would eat pasta (and by longest time I mean until I was approximately 16 years old).
My favorite pasta memory is eating spaghetti al fresco in Salzburg on a perfect summer day.
I remember making lasagna from scratch the 1st time. I was fairly nervous as it always seemed kind of intimidating and I’m a self-taught cook, so I just kind of went with it. Thankfully, I seem to be a natural at cooking and it came out incredible! I still love lasagna and love to make it, and try different variations of it. Keep up the great work, I love the site!
My favourite pasta memory is from when I was twelve and my dad and I would cook every Sunday. We particularly loved Italian food and so we decided to make our own tagliatelle and pesto… I never have anything like it without remembering the fun I used to have with my dad and the mess we made that day! A firm favourite of mine and I still make it when I visit my parents! Pasta is always a good memory
Let’s see…I think my favorite pasta memory would be making a Harvest Mushroom Pasta early in my marriage and having both myself and my husband realize how much we love the pairing of dill and mushrooms. I had never thought of that combination and it seriously changed my life. That recipe has been a staple for the past 6 years, especially when we are looking to make a vegetarian meal!
My favorite pasta memory happened pretty recently. After hours of watching cooking shows, I decided to make my own ragu and fresh pasta since everyone makes it sound so easy (It’s just eggs and flour!). So while the ragu simmered for 3 hours, my boyfriend and I made tagliatelle from scratch. It was a lot of upper body strength involved, especially since we didn’t have a pasta machine. I don’t know how Italian grandmothers do it!
Anyway, the tagliatelle turned out horribly, but the sauce was amazing. It sounds like such a fail moment as a novice in the kitchen, but I learned how to make the best out of a bad situation. I also thought it was really sweet the way my SO tried to convince me that it “wasn’t that bad” even though it really was. Plus, the ragu was still amazing.
Spending a semester in Italy in college made me love pasta so much i returned to the US 10 pounds heavier! It was all worth it.
My favorite recent pasta memory was my daughter eating cavatelli with pesto in Rome this summer. Pure. Joy.
I have a strong and abiding love for pasta, and still get really excited when I get to eat it. When I was little, my dad used to always let me test it to see if it was finished. Not a big deal, but for a pasta lover like me it felt like I was winning since I got to eat it before anyone else. Now I also know that my Italian American father wanted to make sure his daughter knew how to tell when pasta was cooked properly.
Favorite pasta memory–I was drunk and sitting in my college’s roommate’s kitchen. Really, it was his mom’s kitchen because our dorm had closed for summer and we were staying the night there. We’d been involved in a super-intense game of quarters because our on-the-spot thinking told us that this might increase the chances of me getting on my morning flight without a hangover. He boiled some pasta, then drained it way too early and handed me a noodle. “Dude,” I told him, “this is not fit for anyone’s mouth.” “That’s what she said,” he responded, and threw the noodles into a white wine tomato cream sauce he had going on the stove. After a couple of minutes, he plated it–the most silky, sauce-attracting pasta I’d ever had. Living in a dorm and eating campus food with someone can disguise their mad culinary skills. Kind of a bro-story, I know, but I still often use the tip I learned (and somehow remembered) from that night: leave pasta way underdone when you drain it, then finish it in sauce.
For the past couple of years my good friends will gather on Sunday nights to cook meals together, drink good wine or a specialty cocktail, and catch up on life. We decide on a meal before and either bring the dishes or cook together. Some of the best meals we’ve created are homemade pastas, especially ravioli. Store-bought ravioli doesn’t compare to rolling out your own dough, creating specialty fillings, and topping it with homemade tomato sauce and fresh parmesan. The time spent with good friends helps, too!
I still remember the first time I made carbonara. Eye opening! So rich and delicious!
My favorite pasta memory is when my dad made a horrible, horrible attempt at homemade lasagna. He is not really a cook and thought it would be sweet to make a home-cooked meal for the family. He had a recipe, but decided to improvise A LOT! He used slices of Kraft American cheese between the noodles. It was disgusting! But oh so hilarious!
My grandmother is from Napoli, Italy. Whenever we didn’t feel well she made us Pastina with butter and a little cheese. I’m 40 years old and I still make this for myself when I am under the weather. Even though it’s simple, it’s never like my grandmas.
I recently went gluten-free and dairy free, and so I had pretty much given up on enjoying creamy pasta . . . until I discovered gluten free pasta and goat cheese! I made some bow ties, poured on some tomato sauce and sliced some goat cheese. It turned melty and creamy and this tomato-goat cheese pasta was the best I ever had!
My favorite pasta memory is the first time I made homemade pasta. My wife surprised me by purchasing the pasta making attachments for my KitchenAid. And that first time, I was SO proud. Heck, every time I make it I’m proud. Made a batch after a long break last week, and it was perfection. Hands dirty, throwdown pasta making is just the best.
Thanks for hosting this giveaway!!
My favorite pasta memory goes back to when I was 6 years old. My grandma took care of me after school, and whenever I was hungry, she would cook me “pasta”. The reason why this memory still lingers in my mind is because this pasta wasn’t any ordinary pasta. Grandma’s pasta was made out of spaghetti noodles mixed with two packets of Heinz ketchup. At the time, I didn’t know that real pasta involved a different kind of tomato sauce, but I loved it regardless.
When I was little, my dad used to cook me Kraft mac and cheese for dinner and he would overcook it a little bit so there were charred bits that tasted so good to me. I’ve never been able to make it the same way.
Can’t wait to try this. One pot meals are so handy!
The best pasta memory I have isn’t about the most amazing dish I’ve ever had, instead its about the first meal I’ve ever made from scratch. I decided one day I was going to cook for my roommate because she wasn’t feeling well and the only thing I was really good at at the time was boiling noodles. I decided I was going to make my own pasta sauce from scratch with tomatoes and olive oil and balsamic vinegar. I cooked that all up and decided to add other fresh veggies, which included onion, peppers, and…. cucumber. At the time I had no idea that cucumber was not the kind of veggie you add in without preparing before hand.. So it made everything taste weirdly bitter! Well my roommate was trying to be nice and said it tasted “interesting”… I know a little better now
This may not be my favorite pasta memory but it does stick out. After the first time I made lasagna, I was complaining to someone about how peeling the garlic took forever. Yes, I had put the entire bulb in and not just one or two cloves!
My favorite pasta memory is from whenever I would visit my grandma and grandma as a kid, grandma would make stuffed pasta shells(every time, a classic), and grandpa would make bread, and we’d all line up in the kitchen and then eat it with all of the cousins around the dinning room table.
My favorite pasta memory is a dish claimed to be “Greek Spaghetti” at a dusty little Greek restaurant that (back in the day) featured a nightly piano player and singer. The sauce was comprised of browned butter (or sometimes black butter – depending on the d) over spaghetti and tossed with a bit of feta cheese, some paprika and I suspect a bit of parmesan or romano. It was probably the most artery clogging version of pasta I can imagine, but so unbelievable delicious that you didn’t care if you oozed butter out your pores for the next few days. I have not thought about that dish for a long time, and now I am tempted to make it – and perhaps add some capers and sundried tomatoes.
When I first heard of one-pot pasta I couldn’t believe how simple it would be to just throw everything into a pot. Of course I got intimidated but tried making it and it was successful! Would love to try it again with a Le Creuset pot!
Growing up in an asian household, pasta was pretty foreign to me. One day while playing video games at a friend’s (we were pre-teens), his parents insisted I stay for dinner. That was the day I was introduced to spaghetti & meatballs. Nothing fancy, but amazing every time!
the first time i made pasta in middle school! I felt like i was the world’s best chef!
Some of my fondest memories of eating pasta come from when I lived in Japan right after college. New and unusual flavor combinations reflected the Japanese specialty of honing something down to perfection while adding a touch of the sublime– oyster mushrooms with ponzu, eggplant and katsuoboshi, and even plain old marinara done to a t.
I’m a huge fan of one-dish meals…especially pasta meals! I enjoy how flavors of a one-dish meal layer together to create a whole new taste experience. I’ve never been one of those people who separates food on my plate not allowing them to ‘touch.’ I have friends who do that… seriously, now, you don’t know what you’re missing! Every now and then, who am I kidding … often I MUST have a pasta meal! Pasta boosts my mood, boosts my joy and boosts my booty with energy. My favorite pasta dish memory was a dinner with friends. We all shared in the chopping, stirring, sauteing, simmering, and sampling (!) of a simple dish that was a happy shared meal. Pasta and friends, can’t top that!
My best pasta memory is going to an Italian restaurant with my family when I visited my dad in the summer. It was family from Italy that opened the restaurant and we always had the bow tie pasta with spinach and shrimp in a white sauce. Before the restaurant closed their doors to move back home they shared their wonderful recipe with our family and to this day I make the pasta every so often. Every time I cook it, it brings back good memories and tastes fantastic as well!
My favorite is the first time I mastered bolognese! I had been trying for years.
My favorite: in college I had a good friend who was from Maine. She was (and still is) one of the best people I’ve ever known. Just really honest and accepting. She made this baked Mac & Cheese that I will never forget. It was all from scratch with mini shells, extra sharp white cheddar, butter, onions, magic, and a crust on top made of butter melted with crumbled crackers it something. The stuff was legendary, and I’ve never had any better. I should catch up with her and ask for that recipe. :)
I am not a dainty eater. When I was a kid my neighbor used to guess what I had for dinner by looking at my shirt. Anyway, pasta has always been a messy meal for me. I try to spin it on my fork and get it into my mouth but most of the time it ends up on my chin, my lap, my shirt, etc. I remember being invited to a friend’s house for dinner as a kid and her mom served pasta. They were all carefully eating it, taking small amounts and careful bites. I didn’t want to embarrass myself so I did the same. I didn’t get a drop of spagetti sauce on my shirt or the table cloth but I really didn’t enjoy my meal. Now, whether by myself or with others, I take big saucy mouthfuls of pasta and I make a mess. Pasta is meant to be enjoyed!
My favorite pasta memory is the first time I fed spaghetti to my daughter. I loved watching her face light up and seeing the sauce EVERYWHERE was just so classic. Plus it helped that I made the spaghetti, and I always love it when my family loves my food!
Favorite pasta memory? what a difficult question to answer! My fav is probably when I was little, my dad would cook the pasta and there would always be ‘logs’ (you know, a gang of cooked spaghetti stuck together in lumps)…my mom and sister would always argue over who got the ‘log’ and the loser got the smaller log (there were always multiples!). Definitely one of the more entertaining nights was pasta night at my house growing up….
On another note – I recently came across your blog and really like it! Keep up the great work!
Hmmm, favorite pasta memory. The year my husband and I traveled to Italy. We visited old family friends on their farm outside of Milan. We spent a day helping harvest their olives (I am so not lying!). Our hosts mother spent all day in the kitchen making all of us workers a huge meal. Dishes kept coming out of the kitchen…course after course. Spaghetti was one of the dishes. It was delish of course, but the next best part was the next day for breakfast. She put a pan on the stove, threw in some whisked eggs and parmesan, then threw in the spaghetti and mixed it all up…cooked for a bit and turned it out like a frittata….I’ve made that dish ever since….over 15 years now. Superb
On tour with my old band outside of Salt Lake City years ago, our show was cancelled last minute. Without a place to stay or really any money for food, we pulled our old, beat-up Dodge Van over at a highway adjacent gas station and, eyeing an electrical outlet on the side of the building, plugged in out electric kettle. We cooked noodles in the boiling water, then added jarred sauce from the emergency pantry we kept in the van (which I called the Vantry). We ate from shared paper bowls while sitting on the pavement and dreamed of a perfect world of regular showers, enough couches for everyone to sleep on, and drink tickets that never ran out. It was the best one pot pasta dish I have ever had.
The first pasta dish I learned to cook after college, that came from my good friend, was called cheesy chicken & pasta. It was the first pasta recipe I added to my recipe book. Sauteed chicken breast tenderloins, zucchini, corn, and wagon wheel pasta tossed with pepper jack cheese! Not bad for a struggling college graduate!
I love my aunt’s meat and mushroom lasagna. So cheesey and rich. She makes it with love!
I am always adamant about making one pot pasta because I think it is just engrained in me to cook the pasta first, reserve some of the liquid, and then finish it off. Your photos definitely make me want to give it a try though and the short list of simple but flavorful ingredients make it even more worth while. Personally, my favorite pasta memory was the first time I made pasta a while ago. I had my cousin, aunt, mom, and sister in the kitchen with me with glasses of wine and helping roll out and cut/shape the pasta by hand.
Really bad pasta in Florence, Italy because it was a restaurant for tourist. Bad service, bad food, but free Parmesan on the table, of which, we used up all their Parmesan to make the subpar/expensive tomato pasta palatable. But the memories of that night were worth it!
I remember making pasta with my mother for my birthday. I don’t know how I came up with it, but that’s what I wanted for my birthday supper. I’m glad I did, because that memory stays with me :)
I’ve never tried a one pot pasta before – I’m always looking to simplify things and use less dishes though, so I’ll have to try it. That braiser looks gorgeous too! It’s hard to pick a favorite pasta memory… at my college graduation my family went out to a small family-run Italian place where I’d made friends with the owner, and he brought out a free plate of handmade gnocchi as a gift. I’d never had freshly made gnocchi before, only the kind from the package, and these were like little soft pillowy clouds in a gorgeous cheese sauce. I became obsessed with learning how to make them and experimenting with all sorts of types/flavors… so yummy!
I think one of my favorite pasta memories was when I successfully made pasta alla carbonara for the first time (the kind without cream, but with eggs and lots of cheese). I used pancetta instead of bacon and it all tasted so…right. A great milestone in my cooking career!
My favorite memory is of making carbonara for my huge extended family when I was probably too young to be doing such things. But I told my aunt I wanted to cook dinner for everyone, and she let me! My cousins helped out, and in the end we had a fancy kids-made meal for 20. Good to be self-sufficient at a young age ;)
my favorite pasta memory is making stuffed manacotti on a mini assembly line with the kids. They love to help cook and its great to have some help in the kitchen! Seeing all the hard work makes them more greatful for what it takes to make the meal and having a part in it gives them a sense of accomplishment.
My favorite pasta memory is a testament to what parents will do for their kids. I was in 5th grade and really wanted to make dinner for my family, so mom brought out the pasta, meat and jarred sauce (midwestern family, we weren’t fancy) and let me have at it. I learned the hard way that you had to boil the water before tossing the pasta in. Whoops. Mom and Dad ate the ENTIRE helping that I dished up for them and kept telling me that I was a wonderful cook. To this day, if they’re visiting and I make them a meal, I don’t know whether or not to believe them if they compliment my much improved culinary skills.
Favorite pasta moment was when I was a kid wandering into a bulk store and they sold ONLY pasta. All shapes and sizes – PLUS THE COLORS! Then I got to see a paster maker in action! 8 year old me nearly peed myself in excitement and immediately when I got back home I made pasta through a similar looking playdough machine and ate it. All of the playdough. I was not the brightest bulb.
My funniest pasta memory is from childhood when my mom used to make homemade mac n cheese. She would toil over the stove making the special white sauce, waiting for it to thicken. At the time, whenever she would make it we would just complain saying “eww I liked the box stuff better!”. How naive! It wasn’t until later in life that I realized how delicious it was!
I’m definitely trying this lovely springtime one pot pasta dish!
My fav pasta memory has to be me and my younger siblings sneaking the mushrooms in my mom’s homemade spaghetti sauce onto each other’s plates when no one was looking… We were very picky eaters when we were kids!
My favorite pasta memory involves making homemade gnocchi and cavatellin with my Italian American roommates and their cousins in new haven! It was fun and delicious!
I lived in Yunnan, China for two years. On my last night in Yunnan, I went to a wild mushroom hot pot restaurant. First, they cooked wild mushrooms with a whole chicken. You were not allowed to eat the mushrooms for 15 minutes, because the servers said that they were poisonous up until the 15 min. mark. Then, the servers filled your bowl with the mushroom and chicken goodness.. Then, the chef came up and made pulled Chinese noodles 拉面 right in front of us and tossed that in the already amazing mushroom chicken broth. It was epic and arguably the tastiest meal I have ever had.
This is a tough one because there’s so many… But I think my favorite pasta memory was making a giant pan of white cheddar mac and cheese, eating a little bowl with my dad, and then taking the rest to share with the homeless people living near my street. The looks on their faces when they ate a spoon of the hot pasta is something I will never forget.
Favorite pasta memory: making Marcella Hazan’s eggplant pasta for the first time. I never have success with eggplant, but somehow created the most delicious, creamy pasta with this recipe! It was delicious and immediately added to my regular rotation. Ultimate comfort food.
Making spaghetti with my grandmother. Everytime I make her sauce recipe, it brings back memories of playing around with her in the kitchen…
Watching a video of me at four years old having a tantrum because I hated spaghetti and refused to eat it. Now, if I could eat it every day for dinner and get away with it, I would!
My dad loved to cook but worked 12 hour days so he could never make us a meal let alone sit at the table and share a meal with us. But every once in awhile, when his schedule was open around dinner time, he would make his decadent seafood pasta. And it was like a big warm hug every single time.
One of my all-time favorite memories: My boyfriend first asked me out when my sister was visiting in town visiting. I told him I wanted to go on a date, but he’d have to wait until my sister left — in two weeks. So the three of us are hanging out, and he starts talking up his killer avocado pesto recipe and then invites us both to have a pesto pasta dinner at his house. He essentially ended up having to date me and my sister both for the first two weeks of our relationship, and I was totally head over heels. It wasn’t until maybe 6 months later that he admitted that he had never actually made the avocado pesto before… I think he could have served Kraft mac and cheese and he still would have had me hooked!
My favorite pasta memory is going out to dinner on Valentine’s day worth my 18 month old child. Her dad was in class that night, so i took my daughter to dinner. We ate at an Italian restaurant, i ordered buttered noodles for her and a bucatini amatriciana. 8 years later, i now recognize that night as foreshadowing – the daughter and i continue to celebrate our love. And her dad and i are divorced.
When I was seventeen, I tagged along with my parents on a business trip trip to Rome. We arrived at our hotel after 10p — absolutely ravenous — and asked the hotel for a restaurant recommendation. They referred us to a tiny establishment just around the corner from the hotel. When we arrived there, it was packed! I recall my parents having no idea what to order, but we were served a farfalle/mushroom/garlic/flat leaf parsley dish that I have never forgotten. It wasn’t until I was in my 30’s that I finally figured out how to recreate it. So simple, yet so delicious. Even now, the memory is so strong, I can smell the garlic :)
My favorite pasta memory is when I made Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo for the first time and it came out so amazing! I made it a million times the simple way, but then began experimenting with gorgonzola dolce and spinach. Uhh I’m drooling now just thinking about it!!
My favourite pasta memory.. if I HAVE to pick just one would be the horrific (now hilarious) event that was my first time making pasta from stratch. I commited to trialing my new pasta maker the night of having friends over for dinner. I should have known.. I really struggled with feeding it through the pasta maker to turn it into fettuccini so I ended up manually slicing the sheets of pasta and served a very homemade, wonky rustic type pasta. It was delicious but not the prettiest..but very funny. Lesson learnt.
I almost need to have another dinner party, 2.0 and wow them with one pot pasta and hopefully redeem myself by serving it in a fancy Le Crueset pan!
Pasta memories….my best ones are when I lived in Delaware where sea food was plentiful. There was always a yummy pasta and sea food dish there. Now I’m in Texas in the dry lands. Lol
My husband and I decided one weekend to make homemade lasagna. We made fresh lasagna noodles, bolognese and bechamel sauce. It turned out amazing!,
My favorite pasta memory has to be learning how to make homemade, baked mac and cheese from my grandmother. My siblings, cousins, and I grew up having it with every holiday meal. It’s the reason why I’ve gotten as much into cooking as I am. Standing there in the kitchen with my grandma, learning her recipe, is what sparked me to love cooking. Hopefully, teaching my kids that same recipe will spark the same love in them.
This looks delicious! My favorite pasta memory is eating large plates of messy spaghetti for dinner with my brother and sister, then curling up with them while my dad read us one of our favorite books, “More Spaghetti, I Say!”
I was in a hostel in south Amrica, cooking unsuspectingly when a guy next to me was holding a bunch of spaghetti over his boiling pot. By sheer animal instinct I pounced on the poor guy with the first crack. I snatched the pasta out of his hands and told him never to pull off such a stunt again, and that if he wanted short pasta he can go buy himself some penne and that if i ever catch him trying to break perfectly good spaghetti again, the sauce gets it.
I will never forget my first trip to Venice, sitting by the water, slurping pasta with my girlfriends…
my favorite pasta memory was when I made fresh pasta for the first time! that + homemade bolognese made for a perfect dinner :)
My favorite pasta memory is making my first lasagna with my mom in high school. She is an excellent cook, and her recipe for vegetable lasagna is divine! I can still remember the mess that I made (it was my first time), but ultimately it came out almost as good as hers!
My favorite pasta memory is taking my volleyball team out to lunch at Vapiano last year in Washington, D.C. It was a wonderful meal, and the first time (yes, the first time!) I had ever had fresh pasta. It was quite the experience and great to take our team of local NC girls out to see the big city, walk around in Chinatown, and enjoy a great meal together.
My husband and I love to cook and seriously love hosting dinner parties. I remember the first time we decided to make home made pasta. We practiced at least 4 times to really get the dough perfect and tried out several different home made sauces. I’m a big planner when it comes to our dinner parties. I’ll have the menu figured out at least a week before, the shopping completed on the Monday so I only need to pick up the fresh produce. I also do as much prep work on Friday night so Saturday is smooth sailing. I also prepare a detailed time line by the hour to keep us on track. Embarrassingly even including the time to light the candles, put on the dinner party playlist, pull out the meat from the refrigerator, turn on the oven, etc. I continue to build my time lines because it helps keep us on track and lessens the stress. So the night of the first ever fresh pasta party, we were ahead of schedule and feeling good. Candles were lit, guests were arriving and the evening was underway. as the schedule dictated it was time to start the pasta water. My husband walked into our pantry to retrieve the fresh pasta and as far as we can piece together the clues, a racoon or bird or our neighbor’s cat entered through the open window and ate all the pasta. We have no doubt it was our best pasta to date.
My sister and I were backpacking through Italy and decided to stop at this small bistro while walking in Venice. It had been a LONG day and we were looking forward to the wine and food-we were starving!! We sat at the kitchen counter and ordered pasta of course and some appetizers. While sipping our wine, a few Italian cooks started chatting with us insisting that we were twins and insisted that they needed to get pictures with us to show their family. We thought this was odd, but obliged, hoping it would get us some free appetizers (which it did!). We scarfed down the three plates of appetizers, starting to feel a little full. But then… the pasta came out. It was absolutely beautiful. To this day, I still don’t know everything that was in that beautiful dish. It was salty and sweet; the perfect texture, and had some type of meat or salty fish. We were in heaven. The next day, we insisted on coming back, thinking that maybe it was THAT good because we were starving. Nope, the next day it was even better. When we came back to NYC, we tried a number of times to recreate the dish. We’ve come close, but haven’t been able to yet. My sister and I still talk about how one day, we’ll go back and get the recipe from that place.
My favorite pasta memory was definitely on a night when I had barely any food left in my refrigerator. I noticed I had one chicken breast left and some garlic cloves. Then, I saw some heavy cream leftover from some baking and got the idea to make a creamy chicken pasta! It was so yummy, and the homemade sauce was so smooth and not too creamy! I can’t wait to make it again—I felt so inventive!
My husband and I are both mac and cheese fiends, so we’re constantly trying new recipes and flavor combinations. It’s fun to be in the kitchen together, especially when pasta is involved!
My favorite pasta memory is cooking homemade jajangmyeon with my mother. The thick brown sauce is slightly salty and the noodles are perfect. I love it best with bits of bulgogi and vegetables in it. LOVE!
My favorite pasta memory is making spaghetti and meatballs with my mom and grandma. They veered from the traditional ingredients of meatballs in favor of a more Chinese-style, but the exotic taste paired with the spaghetti and sauce (also made from scratch) was amazing. It’s now our tradition!
……my first time having Carbonara with the man I eventually married. My love of Carbonara outlasted the love of the man.
When I was a child, my mom used to hang her homemade pasta over the dining room chairs to dry. Recently, I received a kitchenaid pasta attachment and was incredibly excited to use it for the first time. I spent hours deciding on a recipe, method, and type of pasta to make. So I made my pasta, and hung it over the back of my chairs just like my mom used to. I went to sit down afterwards, and from the other room, I hear a strange smacking sound. Thinking my dog was just cleaning herself or licking her bone, I didn’t think much of it..until I walked into the other room to find my pasta had disappeared and realized my dog was not licking anything, but was actually had decided to eat all of my pasta hanging from the chairs. Maybe not a favorite memory, so to say, but surely a memorable one that I will think of each time I make pasta.
My family has a recipe for Farfalle Leonardo that we made at least once a month when I was a child. As we got older, and healthier, we stopped making it as often. By the time I had children the dish was rarely served. So my middle child was roughly 6 by the time he got to try it. He ate 5 helpings in one sitting and asked for it for weeks afterwards. It’s become his birthday request meal for the last 6 years.
When I made Shrimp Scampi for the first time, it was a revelation. The recipe I made just really had the best butter, white wine and red pepper flakes sauce ever. Add the shrimp and I can eat the entire bowl myself! I always have to seriously try to not eat it all when I make it, haha.
My favorite pasta memory is my dad making burnt butter noodles with parmesan cheese. He says he picked it up from the Greeks: his first marriage when he was very young was a Greek lady. We all still eat it to this day. It’s a great side with steak or just by itself. He makes it the best, just like his burgers and everything else he makes!
My favorite pasta memory is the first time I made drunken noodles. I saw it on a blog I can’t remember the name of right now and I just had to make it. As I was slicing vegetables and sautéing and pouring in the wine, I realized how much I loved to cook.
P.s. I neeeeeed this braiser.
Omg, your photography is seriously so gorgeous. That photo w/ the peas pouring and the little individual water droplets?? Unreal.
Anyway, favorite pasta memory would probably be learning to make pasta from scratch in Italy. I remember at every turn of the gauge, my Italian “mamma” would have me say out loud which number we were on (in Italian since she didn’t speak English.) There were 6 gauges total and to this day I can only count to 6 in Italian. (Better than nothing!) ;)
Best pasta ever: My daughter was 4. she was an adventurous eater (lucky me!) and one day told me she wanted to eat a rainbow. We went to the produce stand and got red tomatoes, yellow peppers, snow peas, carrots, mushrooms, and some angel hair. We sauteed the vegetables with some garlic, them let them simmer n a little broth while the angel hair cooked. Tossed it together, and put a little bit of cheese on it at the table. she christened the recipe “Yummy Noodles” and drew a picture on the paper where we wrote it all down. Now, she’s 18 and we still eat a rainbow for dinner!
My favorite pasta memory is from my trip to Italy and BUCATINI ALL’ AMATRICIANA. I had never had it before and ate it as many times as possible. I have tried many versions at home and am getting closer to the perfection of that trip. It is just a handful of ingredients that marry to a bold and gutsy flavor. YUM!
I remember the first time I ever ate linguine with clams, thinking I hated seafood, then diving headfirst into the winey-garlicky broth with bread and reckless abandon.
My favorite pasta memory? Just one? I remember making spaghetti and meatballs for the first time, sauce and meatballs from scratch. I slaved away ALL DAY in the kitchen while my fiancée and his brother were working on tearing up the basement. The kitchen smelled like nothing but amazing…The meatballs were perfection. Tender, juicy, flavorful. The sauce was TO DIE FOR. And yes, I’ve made it again and again but never quite pulled it off the same…I always somehow manage to tweak things and not remember what I did to make it that amazing again..oh well, better to have loved once than to never have loved a pot of spaghetti and meatballs like that again.
Whenever I think of pasta, and I mean really good pasta, I think of my dad. He’s always been an amazing cook and a perfectionist in the best – and worst – sense of the word. Once when I was in high school, he decided to make spaghetti from scratch. I had never had homemade noodles before and was a little put off at first by the time and attention to detail required, but my dad insisted so I rolled up my sleeves and helped him make the dough, put it through the pasta maker, and carefully lay out the strands. He constantly had to tell me to move slower, be more gentle. I just don’t have his patience. But the end result was definitely worth it. We dined on steamy bowls of fresh spaghetti with meat sauce. I’ll always remember how the meal warmed me from the inside out, and the great time I had with my dad making pasta.
I voted! And holy heck, i am obsessed with the Lapis color!
It’s so difficult to choose a single pasta memory!! My father has owned an Italian restaurant for the last (almost) 40 years, so I should be inclined to describe the amazing, hearty, homestyle sauces we serve up, but I’m torn! Even though we own an Italian restaurant, my father is actually an immigrant of Greeece. At the time my family opened npour restaurant in the ’70s, there wasn’t exactly a demand for ethnic foods and certainly nothing like we experience today. At the same time, my mother is very southern, and we have a secret family recipe that totally qualifies as “pasta” (if it has noodles, that counts right?!). However, I’m going to go back to this Greek-thing. Some of my favorite authentic Greek dishes involve pasta. Some you have heard of like partition
When Hurricane Sandy hit New York City, my best friend filled her tiny apartment kitchen with dozens of volunteers making hundreds of sandwiches and chafing dishes full of large-batch meals to donate to a shelter on the Lower East Side. But all she told me was to come over with the ingredients for a whole lot of mac and cheese. I show up with whole wheat pasta, wild mushrooms, and artisan gruyere. I see the volunteers frantically spreading peanut butter on bread, and humbly ask if there is a burner free to start the bechamel. It was definitely the most sophisticated of the dishes we brought down there, but I’m proud to have given everyone a hearty, exciting meal in that very scary time.
Once I went back to college a few days before winter break ended, just to get some time extra hanging out with my friends before classes got too crazy. My boyfriend (who is now my husband) was going through a big bread-baking-Italian-food-loving phase. One day we had a friend (who is a phenomenal cook) come hang out with us. He suggested that we make homemade salmon ravioli and bake some bread. So we spent the afternoon shopping for ingredients and going through the laborious process of making homemade ravioli. Since we were college students, we lacked some proper tools like a rolling pin (but we used the side of a glass). It took a long time, but it was fun to chat and cook something outside of my comfort zone. The end product was delicious: A salmon and orange zest ravioli in a browned butter sauce with freshly baked rosemary olive oil bread. And I enjoyed spending time with my friends as I prepared the food most of all.
Pasta has always been my go to comfort food and being the purist that I am, I love eating it underneath my homemade marinara with meatballs and Italian sausage. I love thin spaghetti but will eat any shape with bow ties running a close second. Which reminds me of a delicious chicken and eggplant sauce I had over bow ties years ago in NYC. You should try Martha’s one pot pasta . It turned out great when I made it. Love your blog and would love to win that braiser!! Thanks!
It’s so difficult to choose a single pasta memory! My father has owned an Italian restaurant for the last (almost) 40 years, so I should be inclined to describe the amazing, hearty, homestyle sauces we serve up, but I’m torn! Even though we own an Italian restaurant, my father is actually an immigrant of Greece. At the time my family opened our restaurant in the ’70s, there wasn’t exactly a demand for ethnic foods and certainly nothing like we experience today. At the same time, my mother is very southern, and we have a secret family recipe that totally qualifies as “pasta” (if it has noodles, that counts, right?!). However, I’m going to go back to this Greek-thing. Some of my favorite authentic Greek dishes involve pasta. Some you may have heard of, like pastitsio (a Greek “lasagna” with a pseudo-bechamel and ground beef filling), but then there’s also my grandmother’s simple one-pot orzo, tomato, and bone-in chicken dish (delicious, might I add). Still, what I’m really drawn to is her simple pasta and meat sauce, otherwise known as, “macaronia mei keima” (literally, “noodles and meat”). Greek dishes typically use “macaroni,” a very long, hollow pasta–almost tube-like–in nearly every dish, including pastitsio. It’s so easy, yet entirely authentic.Then to top off the simplest pasta ever, there is the meat sauce. When we say “meat sauce,” we really mean “MEAT sauce.” While it has a tomato base, the sauce is almost entirely ground beef–it’s very thick–and it is often seasoned with cinnamon, a common ingredient in Greek meat dishes. She serves the pasta with the sauce on top and freshly grated authentic Greek cheese that resembles a softer Parmesan at family luncheons. It is absolutely to die for. (Don’t forget the dense and crusty Greek spome (bread) on the side!)
One of my earliest memories was making pasta with my dad.. I thought it was the coolest thing how we made a pile of dough on the counter, added in the eggs and mushed it together right there. We strung up pieces of twine all over the kitchen and pasta was hanging everywhere! One of my happiest memories.
My favorite pasta memory was making a scallop risotto for my mom’s birthday. It was my first time cooking with white wine and I didn’t simmer long enough after pouring the wine in, so upon serving I realized the pasta still tasted like alcohol. But of course my mom finished everything that was on her plate :’)
My pasta memory is taking a pasta making class with my husband. Best part was being able to eat what we created.
My favorite pasta memory is making spaghetti with broccoli and garlic for my son when he was seven years old. He has been a picky eater all his life, even now in college. Part of the reason is that he has many food allergies, he has learned to be careful with what he eats. He loves broccoli, the only vegetable that he willingly eats with joy since childhood. He also loves bacon, I have to say bacon is probably his favorite food since age three. I saw this recipe in the annual church cookbook and it was spaghetti with bacon and broccoli. I made it, it came together in about 30 minutes or so. I remember the smile on his face to this day, the perfect combination of food he loves–noodles, broccoli, garlic, and lots of bacon. Yum! It is something I make now at least twice a month for dinner and I always make it at least once whenever he comes home from college. It is the food of a happy house.
This looks so delicious!! My favorite pasta memory is my mom teaching me how to make my grandmother’s pasta sauce – meaty and almost like chili! So simple, but every time I eat it, it reminds me of my Nini and makes me instantly happy. I took that recipe with me to college and it was the one thing I knew how to make *well* for my roommates. <3
You know the trick “Cooked spaghetti will stick to the ceiling”? When my mom first taught us that trick, my brother and I ended up with more pasta on the ceiling, on the floor and on our heads than in our bellies!
My favorite pasta memory would have to be my sister making pasta for my brother and I when my parents were away. It was plain pasta and jar sauce – it was decent, nothing special. What made it memorable was the three of us eating a boat load because my sister never heard of portion control cooking. Here comes the epic part: we had a plate left over and we each definitely had at least three portions too many. She didn’t want leftovers so she made me eat it. I became violently ill. Now, you wonder why it’s my favorite pasta memory? Because brothers/sisters do stupid things but we laugh about it years later. Every time we have pasta, we whip this story out and we laugh and laugh and laugh. Wasn’t funny then but hilarious now. Imagine laughing…because of pasta. Best memories of food is because of the people you’re sharing it with.
Stuffed shells
My favorite pasta memory is eating rigatoni with a simple red sauce at a Tuscan villa in Florence. Beautiful summer day eating outside in the garden while the cooks brought antipasto, pastas, and desert. The simplicity but freshness and brightness of the tomato sauce was a revelation.
My favorite pasta memory is one of time spent with my grandmother. She used to cook spaghetti pretty frequently and I loved playing with the cold linguine noodles that she would set to the side for me. I enjoyed pretending to be a “little bird” eating my worms.
I loved spaghetti night when I was a kid. My mom would always make the best sauce and the whole house smelled great!
When my oldest daughter was 6, she asked me what we were doing for Valentines Day, I told her that I was taking mommy to her favorite restaurant in Manhattan. She asked if she was going and I said no, its a date for me and mommy. Looking at me, tears building up in her eyes, she said “You say you love me but you only take mommy out for fancy Valentines Dinners” and stomped away. Needless to say I cancelled my reservation five minutes later!!! Valentines Day dinner that year was Lobster & Shrimp Fra Diavolo over Bucatini, which my daughter devoured. Eight years later, I’m still cooking Valentines Day seafood and pasta variations for my wife and daughters!!!!
My mom doesn’t really cook much, but she does make one super delicious thing: beef stroganoff. I try to have it every time I come home from college now, while I can :)
Pasta is an absolute favorite in my house, and macaroni and cheese tops the list. While we usually have thanksgiving with our kosher-observing relatives, this year they were out of town so of course we added it to the menu. We made the most decadent recipe, I’ll be craving it until the next turkey day dinner!
Making udon noodles with my children for shabu shabu … Put ingredients in plastic bag and knead with bare feet…. Had four children soooo… Ended up with LOTS of udon!!!…. For something so simple it taste so much better than store bought! Now this past New Year we did it with our grandchildren…sometimes life is just Sweet!!!:))). You have some awesome recipes…!! …with your own stories!!!
My mom used to make stuffed shells (in a Le Creuset baking dish!) with ricotta and topped with tomato sauce, mozzarella, and parm. I don’t think I’ve had it since childhood (and now I’m wondering why??), but nothing brings me back to that cozy, excited childhood feeling than the memory of hot, cheesy shells.
My favorite pasta memory is more about eating it than making it. I have always loved Italian food, but nothing compares to eating it in Italy. Last summer while in Rome, we took a day trip to Tuscany. We toured a few small towns and ended the day in the most amazing family owned vineyard. Giuliana, our tour guide, promised we would have the best lunch ever. Walking down into the cellar, we were welcomed with antipati, pici pasta, and more wine than one should consume. The pici pasta was perfectly al dente and it was covered in the most incredible tomato sauce. It was a simple pasta dish but one I will always remember.
The first time I had REAL carbonara. Soooo good!!
making angel hair pasta with my hubby , we made the yummiest sauce that night, I need to remember how to recreate it! :)
This is my first comment on your site. I love the simplicity of this dish and I will be cooking it soon. As for the Le Creuset braiser, I would love to have one. I purchased the 16 quart dutch oven for my husbands’ famous chili in 2001 and after that I was hooked. I have several sizes and they are my go to pans. I especially like the small oval dutch oven it is the perfect size for my Chicken Caccatorie and allows every thing to cook evenly and then the hold over when transferring to any place I am taking food is fab. Thanks for sharing.
Favorite pasta memory – my very first attempt at an alfredo sauce in which to drench my linguine ….I was about 19 years old and was cooking for a date. It came out perfect!
My favorite pasta memory is the linguini and clams that is part of our once-a-year 7 fishes italian dinner. My grandmother would spend 3 days in the kitchen preparing for the christmas eve feast, and the bowl-as-big-as-you-head of linguini and clams was always the crowning jewel! Since her passing, we have kept the 7 fishes dinner alive, and it is the meal i most look forward to every year!
i loved when my mom would make pasta with home made pesto in the summer .. it was such a summer dish and she would add fresh tomatoes from our garden!
My favorite pasta memory is how my failed pizza making attempt turned into a pasta :) I was baking a pizza from scratch for the second time, but for some reason the crust would not bake. Not wanting to waste a whole pizza, my mom and I just scraped off the toppings of the pizza (cheese, pizza sauce, veggies, etc) and mixed it with some more sauce and plain pasta. Not the tastiest of dishes, but definitely still good! Proves you can transform pasta in a million different ways.
I have a recipe for gnocchi drowned in a tomato broth. It’s so easy to make the gnocchi ahead and freeze. I’ve gotten in the habit of making this dish for friends that are new parents. It’s traditional to bring the new parents some meals to stick in the freezer, but what I love doing is actually coming over and cooking them a decadent meal. I’ve done this for several friends and theses evenings just turn out to be the best. I pre-make the gnocchi at home and put together the broth at my friends’ place. I finish it with some crusty bread and fresh shaved parm. Paired with some red wine and greens makes for a fantastic meal that brings a smile to any tired new parent’s face. It’s so fun to spend some time with friends, and it’s become a great tradition to celebrate new babies!
I’ve been very fortunate to have lived abroad in Europe and to have tasted some seriously amazing pasta, but my “favorite pasta memory” has to be when my boyfriend and I made spaghetti alla carbonara in the apartment. The NY Times’ detailed carbonara recipe was definitely an upgrade from our usual noodles plus sauce-in-a-jar ordeal but it was fun to share the strugs.
To be honest, I hate cheese and unfortunately have never been wooed by a gourmet cheese platter or a warm grilled cheese sandwich. That being said, prior to that night, spending money on parmesan and pecorino for a dinner dish was unheard of in my history with Chase. It’s one of those things that my boyfriend has been doing to me ㅡintroducing me to new experiences beyond my comfort zone. Cheese happens to be one of them. As cheesy as this sounds (get ittt), it was a good time cooking and eating the carbonara together, smiling inconspicuously here and there knowing that he was good for me.
xoxo.
My favorite memory of pasta making was when I made dinner for my then boyfriend/now husband’s family. He was helping me in the kitchen (a carbonara inspired linguine with eggs, cheese, spinach, and prosciutto) and when I asked him to drain the pasta into the colander in the sink, he proceeded to dump the pasta into the colander which turned over with the pressure and all the pasta drained into the garbage disposal. Luckily my guests didn’t mind waiting for me to boil more pasta (thank goodness I had more) and the pasta dish still turned out okay :)
best memory of pasta is the first time i made it for my mom who came to visit me for my graduation :)
My favorite pasta memory is when I was about 2 years old and my mom made this amazing spaghetti that my sister and I decided to get all over our heads. Ther a a picture to prove it.
When I was little, I hated spaghetti with meat sauce, which was (and is) my Dad’s favorite so any time it came up on the dinner menu, my mom would set aside some of the freshly cooked noodles for me before they all got mixed into the sauce and she would season them with butter and soy sauce — simple asian-american fusion way ahead of its time.
I don’t think I’ve had that combination even one since I was I was a kid, but I always look back on my ‘special’ dish fondly.
One of my favorite pasta memories is going to the Spaghetti Warehouse with my Dad when I was younger. At the time, I didn’t particularly like tomato-based sauces, and going there meant I could get Alfredo sauce. :)
The first time I made boxed macaroni and cheese, I didn’t drain the water. My mother will never let me forget the Macaroni Soup incident.
My favorite pasta memory is probably the worst pasta I ever ate – my friends and I were traveling around Scotland and staying in youth hostels and we attempted to make mac and cheese from scratch in a youth hostel kitchen one night. It was vile and we couldn’t for the life of us figure out where we’d gone wrong. The whole thing was completely hilarious too.
My mom always makes shrimp dill pasta whenever we have guests over, and it’s one of my favorite sentimental recipes! I could eat that meal every day of my life!
I’ll never forget the first time made friend made homemade pasta…we had it simply with olive oil, basil and fresh tomatoes and it was divine!
Your one pot pasta looks a million times better than mine did–It’s GORGE!! And seriously, scallops and peas?! YESSS. Mine was way too starchy at the end. Looks like I need to redeem myself and try yours.
There are some meals that are so fantastic that they stick with you forever. Like the most perfect chicken and dumplings at The Flying Pig. Or that simultaneously buttery & grapefruit-y sauce with salmon at that restaurant in Paris. Or that insanely simple but amazing pizza from the place on the corner in La Spezia. But one of my favorite dishes was a pasta dish.
When I was 16, I was just starting to really get into cooking, and I was loving it. I especially loved making pasta dishes. Pasta was (and still is!) my favorite type of food. I got it in my head that it would be a good idea to try to cook my way through the entire Gourmet Cookbook (you know, that big yellow one?). Well, I narrowed my goal down a bit to try cooking through the entire pasta section of the book (a big enough venture on its own). I got about 10 or 15 dishes in before I completely petered out. However, one of my all time favorite dishes came through this brief (but fun) experience: fresh pasta with lemon asparagus sauce. Asparagus blended with lemon and pepper make for the most velvety, yet fresh and springy, sauce you could imagine. Seriously. Most of the members of my family don’t particularly like asparagus, but that night, we all sat around the dinner table ooh-ing and mmm-ing, eating forkful after forkful. We all ended the meal with dreamy smiles on our faces, and an amazing memory in our stomachs.
My favorite pasta memory is the first time I made fresh pasta from scratch. The new neighborhood I had just moved to had this great Italian deli. One day I decided to buy randomly buy a pasta machine there. It was so much fun making it from scratch. My only real experience with pasta before that was dried pasta from the supermarket.
My favorite memory is making a big “Italian” feast for my parents and grandparents. It involved making homemade ravioli, using the pasta machine for the first time. It was a delicious success even if there were a few melt downs and dinner was 9 pm.
My best pasta memory is from the dinner we had in Florence – that gave me something to shoot for in my own cooking and sometimes I come close but we always clean our plates anyway!
Best Pasta Ever is a traditional greek lobster one pot pasta dish. Every summer I look forward to going to a greek island and having this dish. You sit down at a taverna and here comes a massive serving dish with pasta cooked with the lobster in a light tomato, garlic and parsley sauce. They ingredients are so simple but the end result it to die for!
My favorite pasta memory is macaroni pie. Macaroni is boiled and then mixed with milk, butter and cheese. It is then poured into a pan and baked into a “pie” of sorts. It was usually served with stew chicken, red beans and callaloo. This is a Trinidadian dish(my parents are from Trinidad) and it was considered a special meal. It reminds me of my childhood. Good food and good times.
My favorite pasta memory was when I let my son (then 7) cook pasta with me for the first time. We worked together both at the grocery store and at home in the kitchen to create a delicious dish with scallops, angel hair and a cream sauce (none of which he would have even tried had he not had a hand in the dish). It’s gone on to become a staple in our household.
My favorite pasta memory has to be when I was studying abroad in Italy in college. I was a super poor student on a shoestring budget, existing on suppli, cheap (delicious) pizza and table wine. But a friend and I decided to splurge on dinner and we walked into a tiny dimly lit restaurant in trastevere. I ordered a simple pasta vongole. I still remember my first bite. The taste was simple and perfect with a generous topping of happy manila clams. That pasta remains as a symbol of being young, far away from everyone I love, but feeling right at home.
Being Italian, I have SOOOO many pasta memories, but my absolute favorite doesn’t include eating or cooking whatsoever. In pursuit of my grandmother’s coveted recipe, we sat at her dining room table for a solid hour trying to decipher her “pinches” and “bits of this”. It still doesn’t come out right.
I actually recently just tried a one pot pasta and wondered where the heck I have been. The convenience of it and the lack of additional dish washing is perfection on its own. This looks quite delightful.
the first real adult meal my mom ever taught me how to make was a creamy chicken pasta dish. I actually think it was a one-pot meal, too. I have since forgotten the recipe, but I’ll never forget how psyched I was to learn to cook something that wasn’t canned soup!
The first meal my now-husband cooked for me was a shrimp and white wine pasta dish. It was pretty good, but I was actually more impressed with dessert–he made homemade crepes for me!
Favorite pasta memory is surprising my boyfriend with his favorite pesto gnocchi when he came home from work. It was still early in our relationship but I think that’s how I was able to steal his heart.
My favorite pasta memory is the one and only time I made my own in an adult ed cooking class.
my best pasta memory was trying tokyo fried chicken’s mac and cheese. soooooo good. i don’t even know where to begin describing its awesomeness.
My favorite Pasta memory was when the very person I fell in love with cooked me the simplest pasta and I thought that was the most delicious pasta I’ve ever had. I had always had pasta that was made using a canned sauce. One day, he said he was going to cook dinner. He never cooked me dinner before, we used to buy food That day he bought a bag full of riped tomatoes and heat those tomatoes for 2 hours until they turn in to the freshest sauce I have ever had. He added salt, pepper and fresh basil. Cooked some penne and shaved romanesco on top. It was delicious. That day was the day I decided I want to learn how to cook and that was the first thing I did.
My favorite pasta memory is setting down with my family enjoying the blue box “pasta” when I was little. My mother has her special things she adds that makes it better, lol. Always tastes amazing when she makes it. Just us, around the table, talking and eating what we could afford at the time – this is when we were most content and happy. Thanks for the chance!
My mom used to make a big bowl of spaghetti with Ragu sauce and I would eat bowl after bowl of it. That was always the meal in which I over indulged.
My favorite pasta memory is our family trip to Italy. Thank you for posting this one pot recipe. Cannot wait to try it!
One of my favorite meals is Greek Shrimp, a scrumptious mixture of garlic, shrimp ,tomato sauce with white wine, feta and pasta of your choice. Always a big hit with friends and family1
We went to this small place attached to a pizza shop called “Bistro 1245.” We weren’t expecting much, especially because the prices seemed too low to justify good food. Boy were we wrong. And the dish that proved us wrong was a deceivingly simple spicy marinara fettuccine, flavored like the sea by a heaping pound of pei mussels on top… For $11. That was about 3 years ago and we still dream of those little mussels every now and then.
My favorite pasta memory is the first time I tried handmade thick rope spaghetti at an old old Italian restaurant in Louisville, Colorado. Interestingly, they have a very old Italian community. It was chewy and so flavorful. I had never tasted real pasta before that. And I’ve never tasted pasta like that again. Maybe it was the altitude or the pure air, but it was so good.
When I was younger my cousins and I would make homemade pasta. The noodles were pretty thick and uneven but they tasted so good because they were homemade!
I will always remember when my boyfriend and I made linguine from scratch on one of our first dates in high school. He had done it once before, but I had never made pasta. It was a new experience for both of us, and it turned out great! 8 years later, we still enjoy eating pasta together and our cooking skills are much more advanced!
Looove making homemade pasta sauce from our tomatoes in the summer, canning it all up, and then popping open the jars every winter. When you hear that “ping” and open the jar in January it feels like a breath of August floating in.
At a big birthday dinner at an Italian restaurant one year in college, my friend and I decided to re-enact Lady and the Tramp with our spaghetti. It took 20 minutes, half the pasta on the plate, and a spilled meatball in someone’s lap to do it without breaking, but we eventually got our photo op.
Making my own pasta! Absolutely a pain in the ass but the sense of accomplishment was worth it.
This recipe is AMAZINGLY easy and delist. I did not have any scallops but added a handful
Of shlmp and a left over cut up chicken breast. I almost did not get any my husband nearly ate the whole pot of food.
My favorite pasta memory is whenever my husband makes homemade noodles. A little garlic, basil, olive oil, and tomatoes and I’m in heaven!
This looks so delicious! I am ready for spring and springtime flavors.
I have so many incredible memories involving pasta since its definitely my go to comfort food. Some of my favorites though must come from when I was growing up and my Dad had just bought his first house. I was in middle school and just really getting into cooking and he would indulge me in all sort of pasta sauce cooking experiments, some of them really delicious and some of them less so. But it was a great way for a young cook to try different flavors together and learn what works and what doesn’t.
My best pasta memory was when I was in college and had carbonara for the first time. It was also the first time I had real parmesan cheese for the first time (instead of the sad Kraft variety in the plastic bottle). It was a revelation! The beginning of my culinary education. What joy.
I remember the year that pasta shifted from a regular staple to one for special occasions. I distinctly remember my jeans being involved in this transition as they threw down the carbohydrate gauntlet and made me choose between them. Since that time, my memories with pasta have grown into truly special events. No longer is pasta a thoughtless add on, but something to photograph, Instagram and send to all of my friends. OMG look at this ravioli! The ravioli memory stands out the brightest and not because it was delicious, but because of the love in preparation.
It started with the decision that we wanted a bigger ravioli. One that could really hold a good portion of Oregon Dungeness Crab without being overwhelmed by the pasta. We purchased a 3/4 inch board of cherry and spent a day measuring, drilling, sanding and curing the perfect ravioli maker. This was an incredible experience as we had deep discussions about the proportions and ratio of filling to pasta and how many would fit on the plate. The next day, we ventured out to buy fresh crab and other local ingredients, popped open a bottle of wine and tackled the pasta maker I inherited from my mom. The kitchen was covered with flour and bits of ingredients and an absolute war zone of tools and corks.
And, it was the perfect ratio and a meal that filled our hearts and souls.
Thank you for the opportunity to share this with you and others.
As much as I enjoy eating really good pasta (for store bought, only DiCecco will do!), I LOVE making my own. Easy, fun and an endless creative release!
I was teaching my friend to make raviolis and, as much as l loved my butternut squash filling, I felt that it cried out for something to ‘set it apart’ . . and I figured it was roasted figs. And it WAS!!! Yummmmmmmm . . . try adding roasted figs to your filling (in fact, I’m thinking of making a roasted fig and ricottaravioli (without the squash) – doesn’t that sound good??
Namaste and happy blogging/cooking!
Suzan
Not long after I married, I was trying hard to be a happy homemaker. I decided to make my own pasta. I didn’t have anything to make it with and so I formed all the noodles by hand. They were thick as worms and dense as clay. I was proud though and to us they tasted amazing. We had invited a chef friend for dinner and he withheld comment. However, the next time he came for dinner he brought a pasta maker. I never used it, in my mind those thick, dense noodles were the height of culinary excellence.
favorite pasta moment: being a “latch key” kid, coming home from school to make dinner for me and my little sister… thinking I was Chef Great when practically every day I would boil some pasta, mix it with a spoonful of butter and a squirt of ketchup, and serve. Actually more delicious than it sounds! ;)
When I was a kid, my favorite food EVER was fettuccine Alfredo. Omg. I had it every time we went out to dinner and asked for it for every special occasion. To this day, my whole family still calls fettuccine Alfredo “elizabeth noodles” :).
being japanese, my favorite pasta memory has to be soba on new years eve. even though i’ve moved from hawaii where all my family live, i still carry out the tradition of soba as my new years eve dinner to make me feel like i’m celebrating with family back home.
Favorite pasta memory is watching Lady and the Tramp :)
I dont really have favorite pasta memory because we make new memories so much because we eat pasta a lot!!(:
My favorite pasta memory is from my childhood. My family would sit around the kitchen table and would take part in making hand- cut noodles from scratch. My dad would feed it through the machine, mom would slice by hand and my siblings and I would fetch for them. The combination of hearty hand- cut noodles and kimchi was perfect.
My favorite pasta memory is from Palermo, Sicily in Italy, where I had the most simple dish you can imagine, spaghetti with a tomato sauce. The sauce had probably cooked for more than 12 hours, so it had the perfect sweetness and colour of hand-picked italian tomatoes. When eating it, you took one spaghetti at a time with a little bit of sauce, so that it would last as long as possible. Nowadays when having a tomato sauce, I always dream back to the streets of Palermo, where I fell in love in Italian food.
My favorite memory has to be using that hand cranker machine to make pasta with my mom when I was just a kid – it was one of the first things she let me do in the kitchen and I remember thinking how cool it was to watch this ball of dough turn into thin yummy strands. Now I’m wishing I had one of those machines myself… thanks for the run trip down memory lane and for the giveaway!
My favorite pasta memory is when my friends came back from Italy and made fresh pasta for all of us. They took a cooking class there and got to keep the recipe. They made an authentic bolognese sauce and it was the best pasta I have ever had. We sat around and stuffed our faces and drank wine and laughed. It was a great night.
My favorite pasta memory is when my little sister tried to make macaroni and cheese by pouring the box of macaroni, a few cups of water, and the cheese packet in a pot and letting it boil. Needless to say it didn’t work, but we had a laugh over it and I showed her the right way. Also – she was fourteen.
I’m a little ashamed of my pasta memory but a box of Kraft’s macaroni and cheese always takes me back.
My favorite pasta memory is being about 14 years old and making my first spaghetti carbonado for my family. Everyone loves it except my brother who drowns it in ketchup. Sigh.
My favourite pasta memory was my first time making a pasta dish when I was 13 years old. :) I remember it was a basic tomato sauce one with spaghetti pasta. I still remember being inspired by one of Jamie Oliver’s youtube videos and running straight to the kitchen that afternoon to find some canned tomato sauce. When I got to serve the pasta to my parents, they were extremely happy, although I remember the sauce wasn’t seasoned too well and it was still a bit sour, I was extremely satisfied because that was my first time cooking something for my parents :) It was like finally saying a “Thank You” to them for all those years they have cooked for me and taken care of me.
This pasta sounds amazing! I’ve never tried one-pot pasta yet but this might be the one that pops my cherry ;)
For a favorite pasta memory…I’d have to pick two.
The first is more simple, family based. My family has an amazing macaroni and cheese recipe (with extra sharp cheddar, marinara sauce and bacon on top) and my grandmother used to make it every time my cousins and I would visit for the summer. I remember sitting in their dining room with the fading light from the day streaming into the windows as we all scarfed down our mac and cheese. The key to eating as soon as it arrived on the table without burning your mouth was to take two giant scoops and flattening it all out into a single layer on the plate with a fork!
My second favorite pasta memory was from the Italy Issue from Bon Appetit several years ago, I took the magazine from my hair salon and it changed my life. I learned about making sauces by hand (I used to be a “canned sauce” gal), cooking pasta al dente and finishing it in the sauce. It changed my life and how I look at food as well cooking.
Mine was eating Zio’s fetuccine alfredo with 5 cheeses as a kid. It was probably a 2000 calorie bomb but I finished it every time (I was a chubby middle school kid lol).
Now I tend to avoid it for lighter fare, but it’s hands down one of my favorite restaurant orders.
Whenever I think of pasta I think of spaghetti parties with me and all my little brothers when we were children. It was always really fun and really messy.
My favorite memory was of my and my sis trying to make homemade pasta from scratch. Sadly, it did not go well, but on the bright side, we appreciated good pasta after that.
The one I can most quickly recall was from back in January. A good friend of mine had just gotten promoted, and I had promised to make her cacio e pepe to celebrate. So, she and two other friends came over and we had a lovely little dinner party, complete with the nice china, good silver, flowers, and plenty of wine. I was so nervous that the cacio e pepe wouldn’t turn out; despite the dish being so simple, there are times I’ve made it that it just didn’t taste quite right. Nervous, but wanting to impress the guests, I started the water for the past and grated the parmesan into a huge, soft pile. Then the pasta went in the pot, until it was just done, and I made sure to set aside a measuring cupful of the cloudy, salted water before draining the noodles. A good pour of olive oil into the pot, the noodles back in, toss, water, toss, butter, toss, cheese, toss, pepper, toss, and keep repeating until the creamy sauce clings to the noodles and you remember that the best pleasures are the simplest ones when you can sit with close friends around the table and share a meal.
I first came across one-pot pasta as a little kid with a dish called shorba from my grandma. By no means traditional, it is an extremely spicy broth made primarily with a paprika-garlic paste (pilpelchuma), which then the noodles soak up and the left over broth thickens. It is my go to meal years later, and not a week goes by that i do not make it. Aside from the awesome taste, the memories of being in grandmas kitchen makes it my favorite pasta memory.
A family favorite is a pasta dish (broken into 2 inch pieces, and cooked with clam juice), with little neck clams. Thank you Ferran Adria for a recipe a normal person can prepare – and very much enjoy!
duuude best pasta memory is definitely finding kitchen scraps and pulling together a one pot spaghetti + left over mushrooms + whole tomatoes + lots of garlic delicious dish! Garlic can make anything good!
My favorite pasta memory is of learning how to use chopsticks by eating ramen. My mom would give me and my sisters bowls of ramen and a pair of chopsticks to practice. I remember playing around and gripping one chopstick in each hand and moving the noodles around, and my mom telling me to stop fooling around and do it right.
My dad’s pasta. Oh so good. We could smell it cooking from outside. He used good spaghetti and made his own sauce with onions and mushrooms and green peppers. He put ground meat and pork bones in it for more flavor. It would cook for hours. We loved to eat the little meat that didn’t fall off the bones while cooking. It was even good served cold from the refrigerator. I miss seeing him make that sauce. He was so proud of his cooking. I miss my dad.
Eating cacio e pepe in Rome. Best three ingredient pasta in the world.
LOVE this recipe! My friend and I love scallops while our partners can’t stand them- this will be a fun recipe to try with them!
My favorite pasta memory is from my childhood. I learned to make classic spaghetti and garlic bread while volunteering for the Salvation Army with my grandparents and siblings. My siblings and I would spend the summers with my grandparents in Galveston, Texas and our Tuesday consisted of organizing and cooking for those in need at the local Salvation Army. To this day I have never met a group of people that were more kind and grateful for what they have. Something as simple as cooking a meal for others taught a valuable lesson about giving and gave me memories that I hold dear to this day. Thanks, Gran!
So many favorite pasta memories! I think the top might be my first ever experience with homemade linguine with fried garlic and olive oil–a revelation.
I always enjoyed my Italian Grandma make fresh pasta for dinner. Although I rarely make pasta many recipes I have created were inspired by her.
One of my favorite pasta memories was with a group of friends at a quaint traditional Sardinian restaurant, La Ciccia, in San Francisco. A good friend of ours calls this place dinner at least once a week, so we were definitely warmly welcomed by the husband and wife owners and staff. I really believe that recalling delicious meal isn’t only about the food, but the whole package. The company, the service, the ambiance, the food and the wine. We had all of that during this evening, but I do have to say the dish that stood out was the fresh spaghetti with squid ink. When the dish was brought to the table, the server shaved tuna hearts on top. It was DELICIOUS!
My favorite pasta memory is studying in Italy in college and trying all of the variations on ragu made with wild boar. It’s still my favorite meal of all time and I can’t wait to get back and have it again.
My favorite pasta memory was when I made a farfalle, mozzarella, and plum tomato dish and was so afraid that my son would not eat it due to the tomatoes. I had halved the tomatoes and seared them to let the juices out. It ended up that my son finish the whole dish, tomatoes and all!
I was taking the last of my Italian language classes to get my degree and decided to make pasta carbonara for a project. The linguini noodles with pancetta, romano cheese, and eggs was on point.
My favorite pasta memory is making spaghetti and meatballs for my grandparents while we were on vacation together. One of the meatballs fell on the floor and we laughed about it for years!
When I prepare my mom’s bolognese (The original recipe from my dad’s Italian stepfather) , memories of my childhood come back…the whole family at the dining table eating pasta.
Can you believe I was 18 years old before I ever had pasta? My parents were strictly meat and potatoes people and that’s all I ever had. We never went out to dinner, either, so it wasn’t until I was in college I even had spaghetti. The first week I was there, my friends took me to Olive Garden where I had the spaghetti and I thought I had died and gone to heaven! Now I make various pasta dishes all the time!
My favorite pasta memory was definitely making Spaghetti and Meatballs from scratch with my boyfriend on one of the first nights we were in our new house. It was the first kitchen mess we made in our new place and definitely the perfect comfort meal after moving in!
This looks better than Martha’s. I am trying it this week. Love your blog!
My favorite pasta memory was going to Street & Co. in Portland, Maine with my husband soon after we got married. We heard about their infamous “Lobster Diavolo for Two”, which comprised lobster tail, mussels, clams, shrimp, and calamari in a spicy red sauce over 2 pounds of pasta. When the waitress came to take our order, we asked if we should order extra appetizers in case we were still hungry. Her response was, “Oh, you might not be able to finish it, so I wouldn’t order any extra appetizers.” That sounded like a challenge to me! And so, we accepted the challenge. My husband and I cheered each other on (mostly me cheering him on at the end) and lo and behold – we finished it! Down to the last linguini strand. When the waitress came back at the end of the meal, she was very impressed. Victory was ours!!!
Oh, I forgot to mention my favorite pasta memory. My mom was an excellent cook and I learned alot from her but there was something about my dad’s pasta carbonara with salt pork and the egg and the fresh parsley and garlic that takes me back to being a little girl and watching him cook for us. It was an event!
I miss my pah- pa.
My favorite pasta memory is when I first made Marcella Hazan’s classic tomato sauce. I was doubtful that something consisting of such few ingredients could be flavorful and delicious. Boy, was I wrong! Sometimes simplicity is best (using the best ingredients, of course).
Sounds Delicious! My favorite pasta memory would be a hard toss up between the weekly Sunday Dinners at my Grandma’s house (we’re Sicilian) where she would make a feast for our family to gather around. She would get up at 4:30 to start the sauce. Hoping one day to be as good as she was!
The other favorite pasta memory was my mom’s favorite dish- a one pot pasta with linguine, peas, flaked salmon lemon & dill. Delicious!!!
Best pasta? So hard. I do remember tasting Pasta Putanesca from a little place in Pasadena Ca, Sushi of Naples. Opened my eyes to olives and anchovies. Nearly 20 years ago, still trying to get it right. Amazing!
Growing up with six siblings, my mom occasionally had to cook for all of them, since they traded off chores to give her overworked parents a break. She figured out how to make spaghetti and meatballs pretty quickly, and uses the same recipe today. Except now, instead of cooking for nine, it’s for two. The giant vat of pasta that we get to eat for the next week is delicious, if a bit insane. It’s one of my favorite memories of time spent with her in the kitchen though. A little zany, a lot amazing, just like her.
…my mum once made a seafood BASED PASTA W SQUID INK PASTA, THE PASTa were the flat and thick kind, like linguini but wider, then again not as wide as pappardelle. the pasta itself, aside from the black color which was quite a novelty at that time, was pretty meh, but the sauce…it was good, not a tomato or cream based…i have no idea how my mummy make it
I love your blog!!! The photography is always amazing. My favorite pasta memory would have to be from my childhood. My dad would start making his sauce early in the afternoon. The smell of the onions and garlic cooking in olive oil was amazing and filled the house. He used tomatoes that we’re canned from our garden. The sauce that he makes is a little sweet and always tastes better the second day. I loved it over angel hair pasta! I still make his sauce today for my family. I am soooo excited for the giveaway, as I have been wanting a LeCreuset braiser for a very long time.
My best pasta memory was making pasta from scratch with my son. He was bout 9 years old and for some reason everything was making us giggle. We laughed the whole time. Now when ever we make pasta we end up laughing the whole time. My son will always want to make pasta from scratch because of the memory but I cannot tell you what was so funny that day. I guess we were just having a good time.
Hi again…I made this last night. I didn’t have scallops so subbed shrimp. So now I’ve finally tried one-pot pasta and I have to say your comparison of it to risotto is spot on. We felt like we were eating pasta with a cream sauce w/o the cream, butter, cheese. Thanks for being the motivation behind finally giving this technique a try. We definitely enjoyed it and will be making this again. : ) Take care!
I remember slurping spaghetti noodles with meat sauce when I was a little kid. My mom always made the best spaghetti: delicious, comforting and fun to slurp!
My favourite pasta memory was during my very first (and only so far!) visit to Florence. I was in grade 12, and had just done a semester of cooking school, and food was my passion (still is!). It was this surreal feeling of sitting down in this tiny little restaurant out in the warm open air with a slight breeze, not understanding the menu at all, but with a bit of help managed to order a plate of spaghetti with oil, chili flakes, parmesan and fresh shaved truffle. The pasta was cooked to perfection, and the combination of simple flavours exploded in my mouth. I will NEVER forget that dish.
And i’m from Canada, so i guess this contest doens’t apply…i just wanted to relive the experience again by sharing it! :)
ugh, i WISH i could do more canadian giveaways, but canadian companies don’t do giveaways. i would LOVE to do them though :(
Thank you for the chance to win a a Le Creuset braiser.
When my husband and I were first married and I first began cooking for real and liking it I used to make pasta dishes every Sunday night. First it was from a recipe and then I started adding things from the fridge and the pantry and doing different things and slowly more and more friends started showing up on Sunday for clean the fridge pasta night. It was a great way to end the weekend and a good excuse to get together with friends and to hone my cooking skills.
Pasta is at the top of my food chain! One of my favorites is simply linguini with butter, garlic, parm & fresh parsley & fresh ground pepper, with a glass of red wine – comfort all the way home! luv your site!
I am always making carbonara. It is my favorite meal when I don’t feel like cooking! I even taught it to my little sister who is 19 just in case she ever wants to impress a date. It is officially the only thing she can make that doesn’t come in a box or can! Win!
I used to always love my friend’s mom’s filipino spaghetti (which is spaghetti with ground meat, hotdogs and lots and lots of ketchup!). I finally decided to make it at home one day after googling different recipes and shopping for the ingredients. I cooked it for my husband (then boyfriend) and several friends..and it was a success! I love to make it when I want some comfort food and don’t feel like making a whole bunch of dishes. The best part about it was that it was a one pot spaghetti!!
P.S. I’ve voted for you on Munchies twice already! :)
My fav pasta memory is my dad’s fresh basil pesto. It’s something I look forward to every summer. He told me if I picked all of the basil leaves, he would make the pesto. Nothing tastes better.
My 7th birthday. My mother gave me the greatest gift of all. The large can of Chef Boyardee meat ravioli, I always knew I wanted to cook and that was the inspiration for me. That was in 1966. I have continued to cook all my life specializing in Italian cooking- now I make my own Ravioli.
My favourite pasta memory was when I worked as a server for an nice restaurant. We had dishes that still make my mouth water, even after I had worked there for over a year… I never tired of the flavour combinations. This particular evening, as I was helping set up for dinner I had to walk to the back of the house and through part of the kitchen to grab more linens. Chef was preparing ravioli and I stopped to watch. He always sounded harsh when he spoke and he turned to say, “Aren’t you busy doing something else?” But this particular evening I responded, “I would rather be doing this,” and I pointed to the food. “Maybe one day when its slow, you can teach me how to make ravioli.” To my surprise, Chef pulled me off the floor that night and I spent the rest of the night learning how to make pasta and cut different noodles. It’s a skill I will always cherish!
We lived in a tiny apartment in NYC with our newborn baby boy. Exhausted to the point of hallucinations, and the stress of unsuccessful nursing had me at a pretty low point. My two best girlfriends brought dinner separately – noodle kugel from one and pappardelle bolognese from the other. From entirely different origins, these pasta meals were hands down, the most nourishing, savored, and appreciated as any I’ve ever had. It truly does take a village!
My favorite pasta memory was the day my sister-in-law made ragout for dinner when they (she and my brother) came to the States for vacation. She is Italian and grew up in Vicenza, Italy, so the ragout she made is Northern Italian. It had hints of clove and cinnamon and it was like no sauce I had ever tasted. Prior to that, I was accustomed to Italian-American red sauce (which I now know is similar to Sicilian or southern Italian sauce). She gave me her recipe and showed me how she makes it and now it’s the only red pasta sauce I ever make. So now I’m the one who gets to introduce friends, family, and coworkers to “real” pasta sauce.
The first time I made stuffed shells and ragu from scratch was. a. dream. I’ve never met a pasta I didn’t love, but didn’t experience the joy of making my own stuffed shells until about a year ago. I’ve since embarked on a homemade pasta love affair and cannot wait to make this lemon scallop pea pasta this week! (so thanks for the recipe!)
My family grew up eating a lot of pasta and for the longest time I only wanted butter on my pasta. I remember when I finally opened up to tomato sauce and other sauces on pasta, I was allowed to put more cheese on my pasta… and really what’s better than too much parmesan on pasta.
My favorite pasta memory has to do with my grandmother. My parents were not ones to spend a lot of time in the kitchen cooking. Fortunately, my grandmother exposed me to quality cooking early on. I specifically recall being repelled by her pasta sauce when I was very young because it wasn’t like the stuff I was used to eating. Within a year of having it served for several Sunday dinners with the family, I found it to be far superior to what my parents usually gave us with big chunks of veggies and meat. She made the whole thing from scratch which was an unknown possibility to me until that time.
My mom’s spaghetti pie. It sounds weird and it is truly lowbrow, but it’s my childhood and my mama and all that stuff in my memory. Plus, crispy spaghetti edges.
I love your blog! You have such a great voice – it’s definitely inspiring! My favorite pasta memory is about the time I truly cooked a meal all by myself for my friends in college. I didn’t have any cooking background at the time and I never learned any kitchen skills from my mother (my mistake, not hers), so it was a true undertaking. My mom was kind enough to supply me with her slow simmered pasta sauce recipe and I went about preparing everything that morning so it could cook all day long. I didn’t want to do just regular ol’ spaghetti though – no, no, I had to make lasagna. After spending ALL day in the kitchen, I then put together a 10 lb pan of lasagna for everyone and was terrified at the results. Thankfully, it turned out delicious and everyone raved about it, which ultimately inspired me to learn more about cooking. Now it’s one of my favorite things to do!
Best pasta memory of all time was wild boar pappardelle ragu at a small hole-in-the-wall outside Cavriglia, Italy! The red wine, fresh rosemary, and hand rolled pasta was to die for!!
Learning my Italian grandmothers meatball recipe, it was an amazing day that i hope to share with my children or grandchildren one day.
I love pasta. I love pasta so much that one time I came home from work starving and waited for eons upon eons for water to boil. Then, I proceeded to pour bits and ends of various leftover pasta shapes into the pot of water. I waited and waited for the pasta to finish boiling even though I was starving, starving, starving. Finally, the pasta was ready and I poured the pasta into a colander. A wide, metal colander with holes large enough for pieces of ditalini and penne to fall through. I was starving and mad at my pasta. And I did the whole thing over again just so I could get a bite.
I love making pasta with my grandmother and her old pasta press.
Exciting giveaway! I didn’t grow up with a lot of pasta (hello Midwest), so my favorite pasta memory is actually when I first “perfected” pasta alla vodka (Ina’s recipe)…not only did everyone love it, but I’d done a few trial runs and was comfortable enough making it that I was able to enjoy my company and host (nearly) stress free. Hosting isn’t easy! It was a pretty exciting grown up moment for me. (Love your blog!)
Growing up I would go to my great-grandmothers house and she would always make spagetti with a meat sauce and a simple salad. It was so basic but I loved it.
My favorite pasta memory is from when I was little – and every year for my birthday we would go to a restaurant in downtown Toledo OH called The Spaghetti Warehouse. My brother, sister, and I would go wild over the games they had and they even had a fortune teller there – but what we really went crazy for was the spaghetti and meatballs. It was delicious pasta with GIANT meatballs. It was just great food and a great experience to spend time with and celebrate with the whole family :)
Ah! Eating fresh delicious pasta in the countryside of Tuscany! Doesn’t get much better than that! :)
My favorite pasta memory are those of when I was in middle school. During the summer, I would attend a special church conference that was for young people like myself. During that time, we would stay with Christian families who lived in that area. I remember one summer, the family I stayed with cooked us a delicious spaghetti dinner. I remember how good I thought it was – how tasty and satisfying. I remember thinking toyself that I could eat that everyday! From that time on, I’ve always had a special spot for spaghetti! :)
My fave memory is of my husband’s grandfather and his FAMOUS spaghetti and meatballs. He used to spend all freakin day on those things. Freshly ground meat, freshly ground spices, raisins….. then DEEP FRIED! With slow slow cooked homemade sauce of course. He has since passed away and we make it every winter to keep up the tradition!
Some of my absolute favorite childhood memories of pasta are nostalgically from pasta roni. The buttery creamy fake cheeses and intense false flavors were everything to me. But I’ll will NEVER forget the incredibly simply and incredibly delicious white clam pasta I had while visiting Italy. The clams were subtle and the sauce was delicate letting the butter, white wine, and cream really shine through in the purest way.
While I might not be able to replicate that pasta at home and I have to stick with variations of Pasta Roni. I’ll never forget that amazing dish which I believe was one pot as well.
Favorite pasta moment: making it with friends :)
Every Christmas my Mother would make 400-500 meat raviolis by hand. She would start right after Thanksgiving and we could not wait until Christmas Dinner!! This was only one of the many courses she would serve. My Father would tantalize all of his customers with the upcoming holiday menu, making them drool over their drinks! She almost always made home made pasta until she passed away in her mid 80’s.
My father graduated from the first class of the Culinary Institute right after the war. He was a cook and my mother a waitress when they met – she told him if he wanted to marry her he better get out of the restaurant business. He became a mailman. Anyway, he used to make lasagna every Saturday for years, and we would schlep it over to our friends house and the weekly penny ante poker night. Just a small group of friends and their kids playing small time poker (letting the kids sit in when the adults needed a bathroom break). The lasagna, bolognese, no ricotta ever. I never had ricotta in lasagna until years later when i became a chef. Best memory ever.
Growing up my favorite “special” meal was deep fried pasta. We would make spaghetti noodles from scratch, rolling out and cutting each piece, then just toss the noodles to make little patties or “nests” which would then get fried.They were always topped with vegetable and chicken stirfry and are one of my best childhood memories!
My favorite pasta memory has to be the time I made eggplant Parmesan from our first eggplants. I salted the slices and let them sweat, and made breadcrumbs from toasted bread. The tomato sauce I’d made from the tomatoes that had grown up next to the eggplants. It all cooked up under mozzarella in a cast iron skillet (Le Creuset, actually!). My friend’s wife had just left him, so we sat around late into the night eating every bite of that eggplant with spaghetti and talking.
Growing up, one of my favorite meals my mom made was an artichoke chicken pasta dish that was baked. SO good.
I just had a duck pappardelle at Caffe Storico in NYC last week. Super thin, delicious pappardelle and a rich duck based ragu. I was definitely a member of the clean plate club that night. So amaaaazing.
My favorite pasta memory is the first time I made my own pasta. It was a revelation! So silky.
My favorite pasta memory is pretty recent, actually. My boyfriend’s mom gave him his grandmother’s pasta roller/cutter last year. It’s a heavy, clunky thing with a crank and three noodle sizes. A couple months ago, we decided to give homemade pasta a try and it turned out so great! How come nobody told me it was so easy to make pasta? We made garlic and basil linguine, and it was wonderful to think we made such a nourishing meal on something his grandmother used long before he was even born.
I’d love to make more memories with this Le Creuset pot!
My favorite pasta memory is when I made chicken parmesan with spaghetti for my then boyfriend. I told him i was going to cook dinner for his family. After his dad ate it, he said, “you should keep her.” And that he did! :)
My favorite pasta memories would have to be the time I went to Bologna, Italy with two really great flatmates of mine when I was living abroad. It was our last trip together before I moved back to the states. We found ourselves in a mom and pop restaurant that you could only imagine on a back street in Italy…home to the famous bolognese sauce! We were all sitting around drinking wine with our food came and the wife asked me if I wanted some fresh grated Parmesan cheese, which of course I did (as we were only a train ride of Parma…!! She kept grating and I kept letting her. She loved that I wanted to much and we all laughed about it (even though we didn’t really speak each others language)…we had the language of delicious food (and cheese!!!) to help us communicate!
My favorite way to eat pasta as a kid was to melt two slices of american cheese on plain noodles. Drove my dad CRAZY!!
My favorite pasta memory is when my boyfriend (now husband) showed me you can add veggies and meat to mac and cheese and get a complete meal. Needless to say, he is still the primary cook in our family!
My favorite pasta memory – My grandmother would always cook us our meal of choice for our birthday dinner. One time I wanted spaghetti and meatballs along with green beans. A very weird combination but my grandmother happily made it for me and I was the only one who got green beans :)
Any memory that includes my mother’s or father’s homemade pasta sauce. Just smelling the sauce cook all day and finally getting to dig in.
Love this recipe! My favorite pasta memory is a super random one – as a kid (and budding “chef”) I used to love make spaghetti (or “subsketti” as I said it) and would have my parents help me make franken-creations, mixing whatever I wanted with the carby goodness. One that sounds so gross to me now, but I think would actually be delicious still today, was a mixture of teriyaki, hot dogs and pineapple with spaghetti. So weird. So good.
My three year old, Emma, is the pickiest eater on the planet. No, seriously, she is! One of the very few foods she will eat is spaghetti with her Daddy’s homemade marinara. AFTER she picks out each tiny flake of oregano and basil (known to her as “black stuff”). My favorite pasta memory was created just this past Christmas, and my in-laws house, where she ate bowl after bowl of spaghetti my MIL made, but we had to lie and tell her Daddy made it! (knowing smiles all around!)
Still dreaming of the Capricci Amatriciana I had at Rose’s Luxury in DC (Bon Appetit’s top restaurant of 2014) – I’m not a big pasta person, but w o w that housemade pasta was soft, was smoky with a kick of spice, was covered with shredded sheep milk cheese, was yummies.
Before I knew anything about cooking, about 5 years ago, my boyfriend and I made homemade gnocchi in his parent’s kitchen on Valentine’s Day. We made an absolute mess with flour everywhere and I think I found pieces of potatoes in my hair throughout the night. Looking back now, the gnocchi was lumpy and was cooked so incorrectly, but now we live together and share a kitchen where we cook together every night. We’ve since made delicious, proper homemade gnocchi of various flavors, but that night is one of our favorite memories. Cooking together is one of the most exciting first steps in a relationship :)
My favorite pasta memory isn’t an exceptional one, but it’s defined me as a person. It takes place in my grandmother’s kitchen. Where all my favorite food memories reside. She was the ultimate kitchen pioneer. Magazine covers decades later showcase foods that were mainstays on our Sunday dinner table. Her excitement over trying new recipes and feeding her family was infectious. It was clear I had caught the bug when at twelve years old I got a kitchenaid stand mixer from Santa. Best. Christmas. Ever.
I If she were here today she would lose her mind of over “one pot” pastas, and would no doubt experiment with them at any hour of the day or night. Which takes me to my favorite pasta memory, when Grandma Connie bought an automatic pasta machine. Date night for my parents meant cooking school for me. Dozens of eggs, pureed spinach, pots of simmering sauces, pesto in the blender, flour everywhere. Linguni hung from every spare pan like tinsel on a christmas tree. Grandpa would yell down from upstairs something about bed times and noise while we formed shells and penne and rolled sheets of ravioli that now required fillings and noodles that now required sauce. Trays of lasagna came next, because, why not? The next day, my parents, siblings, grandfather, aunts and uncles, would all cram around a table that now looks like it could fit no more than four but seemed endless at the time, and grandma would ask her eternal Sunday question, “who wants a meatball?!”. Best. days. ever.
My favorite pasta memory would have to be teaching my boyfriend to make carbonara. It was one of the first times we cooked together. It’s such a simple, delicious dish. It impressed him a lot, and he was surprised at how easy it was to make. He actually continued to make it after that first time, despite the fact that he almost never cooks. It’s one of the only things I cooked for him that he already had the ingredients for on hand.
My favorite pasta memory was after a day of boating out in the hot sun in July. We were so beat that we didn’t want to try anything too fancy, so I started boiling some pasta. After a few minutes, I wasn’t sure if it was done so I called my friend over. Instead of just trying out a noodle, he picked one up and flicked it at the wall! Sure enough, it stuck on there and he proclaimed the spaghetti was done. Five minutes later there were a few more noodles stuck on the wall (don’t worry though, we ate all of it!)
My favorite pasta moment was making Kimchi Udon Carbonara. I never made carbonara before, but I decided to make it for a Valentines Day Dinner. Despite my worries, the udon was easy to make and exceeded all expectations. Udon, Parmesan, pepper, egg yolks, and kimchi. Oh so good!
I love a one pot meal!
Every fall in the midst of harvest season, there were Ball jars lined up along every spare inch of the counter. Tomatoes moved from garden to paper bags for ripening, from paper bag to sink for washing, and from the sink into the pot of deliciousness that eventually became tomato garlic sauce. This long cherished family recipe is all my favorite memories of pasta rolled into one, and every year we get to do it all over again! I can’t wait for September already!
My favorite pasta memory might have been as recently as last weekend. I cooked with my 15 year old nephew and we made Ina Garten’s recipe for Pastitsio. I was a little uncertain about whether he would like the cinnamon, bachamel with yogurt, etc., but he LOVED it! My mind is spinning with ideas for what we could make next in this beautiful Le Creuset pot. :-)
My favorite memory of pasta is eating at a spectacular Italian restaurant next to the Rhine. It was tucked into the base of hill with a castle perched on top and the best dish was my seven-year-old brother’s spaghetti with just olive oil and garlic. To this day, I can taste that garlic. I have no idea what I ordered.
My favorite pasta memory was at culinary school. We had a pasta final where we got to choose our pasta and sauce and had to present it to our chefs. I decided to make a habanero heirloom tomato vodka sauce. I wish I had written down what I made but it was so good. I had a left over bottle and presented it with my plate :)
When I was young, my mom had made spaghetti and I was walking with my plate to the table and wasn’t paying attention. The entire contents of my plate fell on the floor. It was a huge mess!
Ricotta and spinach filled ravioli in brown butter sauce at Bartolotta’s in Wauwatosa, WI – seriously blissful!
Weekends, when my parents would go out, I knew I could count on the babysitter to whip up some velveeta. The more refined palate that belongs to my late 20-year old self might scoff at such an indulgence, but nothing beats the memory of the craggy home that the shells created for the most delectable of incandescent cheese sauces.
My favorite pasta memory is Sunday dinner at my parents’ house. My mom would make a huge pot of sauce with meatballs, braciole, and polpat, served with lots of pasta, garlic bread, and salad. We had our best conversations at that table. I miss my mom and dad!
My favorite pasta memory is probably the first time my mom made pasta bolognese. The memory of her slow cooking the sauce all day is one of my favorite food memories growing up. It has made pasta my favorite comfort foods now as an adult.
I would have to say Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup that my mom used to make. She managed to mix the complex favors into a steamy bowl of comfort.
My pasta memories are truly that “memories”. I haven’t eaten pasta for so many years, being gluten-intolerant.
Rice, corn, quinoa pasta just don’t taste right. Once in a while I find a buckwheat pasta that is 100%-great for Asian-style noodle dishes. I do miss my pan lasagna, I perfected it in high school. Can’t wait to try Ivan Ramen next Saturday when I’m near the Gotham Market-so that’s a future memory. He does allow a rice noodle substitution. I also remember Dim Sum as a child in NYC Chinatown-so much fun. My dad’s army buddy’s wife taught me how to use chopsticks. Would love to win the braising pot. Thanks for your great column Stephanie, I make the Chinese Meat Sauce often now, we call it Pork Crack in our house.
Pasta was better than dessert growing up in Queens, NY in the 1950’s. My first memory, which, when shared, with friends, produces a collective “ugghhhh” was thin spaghetti with Heinz Ketchup and butter. I still make little secret batches on occasion.
But the pasta “piece de resistance” was Burnt Garlic , Olive Oil, Lemon, and Shrimp. Made up by my mother, she coated the al dente Muellers spaghetti in an an old perfectly seasoned cast iron frying pan. Perfect.
This looks so good, really great combination of ingredients! After reading the article – or rather looking at those amazing pictures I ‘m definitely gonna cook it soon. I used to cook pasta separately as well, so it’s about the time to change the habit.
I remember the first time I cooked pasta in a college dorm. It turned out… okay but I was so proud that I was finally starting to cook for myself!
Since I grew up in a big family, my mom always cooked budget friendly meals. Pasta was on the menu at least once a week! When I was little, I asked my mother how she learned to make such delicious pasta sauce. She told me her mother taught her, and then explained to me that when I was a bit older, she would teach me too. When I moved out, I craved that sauce… I needed that sauce. I missed the comforting scent of marinara as it bubbled away on the stove all afternoon. The aroma to this day creates a hunger in me like no other. I go from hungry to hangry instantly (you’ve been warned). I was determined to learn how to cook it, so I asked my mom for her recipe. It was the first thing I ever cooked. My sauce will never taste the same as it did growing up, but thanks to my mom, I am able to have a little slice of heaven when the craving becomes unbearable.
My favorite pasta memory actually happened during a difficult time. I was visiting my parents’ house right after a particularly painful breakup. My mother noticed I was unable to hide how heartbroken I was, and quietly headed to the kitchen (without commenting much). It had been years since she made homemade pasta from scratch (she used to moreso when we were young, especially flat noodles for lasagna), but she did so that day, just to cheer me up– fresh fettucini noodles, hand cut, served in a simple marinara sauce. It did a lot to improve my mood and general outlook on life… I’ll never forget it, or how powerful food can be in this way!
I have an amazing memory with the ever great dish – Pasta! I just arrive in Rome for my study abroad experience. I had been traveling through Europe for a few weeks before arriving in Rome and I was so excited to start this new adventure! I met my roommates in our fabulous apartment and we decided to head to a local restaurant for dinner and to get to know each other. We ended up at the Pizzeria San Marino which was fairly close to our apartment. I had a delcious dish with mushrooms, basil, and the freshest pasta I had ever tasted. It was a wonderful welcome into Roman lifestyle!
Ashley
Pasta has been one of my favorite foods for as long a I can remember, but my favorite pasta memory is every time we visited my Grandmother she made the best pierogi with Farmers sausage.
My mom was a meatloaf and baked chicken kind of mom, but on some rare occasions she would make her signature spicy sausage pasta. It’s one of my fondest memories, and I still request that she make if anytime I’m home (which sadly isn’t often since we live so far apart). It’s so lovely to share a comforting dish with your momma!
Spag bol from Marcella Hazan. Made it for the first time while sick – now my go-to comfort food.
My favorite pasta memory is a new one: making homemade fettuccine with my two young sons. They love watching and helping as the dough transforms into the most delicate pasta imaginable.
My favorite pasta was some linguine with squid, orange, zucchini, tomatoes, and a touch of curry that we had in Cinque Terre in Italy. One of my favorite food memories!
My favorite pasta memory is when I was in Firenze at this little restaurant and I got fresh pasta with wild pigeon ragú. It was the best meal of my life! I had no idea what to expect with the pigeon; what a weird choice of protein! But the little bits of pigeon spread throught the sauce just melted in your mouth. The sauce itself was absolutely delizioso! Taking the risk of trying a weird food definitely paid off. Hands down best and most memorable meal of my life!
My favorite pasta memory was a party that my best friend from University threw for my 21st in Cape Town South Africa. The Italian flag was draped overhead and the food was simply sublime.
In college, we used to have ladies nights at a local place in Little Italy. Some of my favorite memories came form those nights!
I always love a penne pasta with my homemade marinara. And it has to be homemade. With tomatoes from my garden. It just doesn’t taste the same otherwise. Simple, fresh ingredients = perfection. (I’m eager to start dabbling in fresh, homemade pasta soon.) Yum! Also, I just discovered our blog. Love it! Beautiful!
My favorite pasta memory was at this little restaurant in Atlantic city called Chef Vola. It’s a super tiny place (in the basement of a house!) and getting a reservations takes months. It’s probably mafia run and super Italian. We had linguini with clam sauce and it was amazing (although not quite as amazing as the veal chop the size of my face!). It was such an experience being there. I’ll never forget it.
New to your blog…love it!
My favorite pasta memory is of my mom’s lasagna, which was always a special treat. She made garlic toast under the broiler and a fresh salad to go along, amazing. I miss her just thinking of it!
Easy peasy and delicious!