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Do IT this week: Layering
Food is her life, cooking her reason for existence
By Lisa Abraham
Beacon Journal food writer
Published on Wednesday, Oct 15, 2008
When we marry, we get in-laws of all shapes and sizes.
The real ones, of course, but also the wide-ranging cast of friends, co-workers and associates that come along with a spouse.
In my case, among the in-laws I received through marriage were my husband's friend Anna and her husband, Alex.
Anna and my husband worked together for many years and she adopted him as another son, bringing him leftovers for lunch during his bachelor days, inviting him over for dinner and sending him home with enough leftovers to feed him for the remainder of the week and into the next.
Anna is Italian — off-the-boat Italian, literally. She traversed the Atlantic at the age of 4 and still likes to tell the story of her crossing. And like many Italians, food is her life.
My husband is a florist. Design, style and color are his life.
When Anna has a party, there are often 40 at the table, and that's just her immediate family.
She and my husband have a standing joke that once, when she talked about planning a get-together, the florist in him asked, ''What's your theme?''
''My theme?'' Anna shot back. ''Food. Food is my theme.''
And it is. The first time I had dinner at Anna and Alex's home, I was sick from the amount of food I consumed in one evening. Whenever we return, I always make sure I'm wearing pants with an elastic waist and I've learned to pace myself, asking up front how many courses there will be.
Anna is the only woman I know who has a commercial meat slicer in her basement, where she shaves her own capicola and prosciutto for the antipasto that begins most meals.
Second course is usually her homemade pasta, meatballs, and thick chunks of pork ribs she has simmered in a pot of sauce for hours.
When I saw that World Pasta Day was coming up on Oct. 25, it seems like a holiday designed specifically for Anna.
I actually have some experience of my own making pasta.
Back when I was still single and my mother would ask for suggestions for Christmas and birthday gifts, I requested a pasta maker. A real pasta maker. Not some Ronco-Popeil-pocket-fisherman-style pasta maker, but an honest-to-goodness pasta maker with a crank handle. The kind real Italians would use, in Italy.
I would have no drop-in-some-flour-and-push-a-button kind of pasta maker. No, I would make wells in piles of the finest semolina flour and deftly mix in fresh eggs until I formed the most perfect balls of yellow elasticity, which with care and some cranking, would be turned into pasta so light it would twirl itself around a fork.
Friends and family would gather at my table, cheering Delizioso! and begging for more. In my fantasy, Italian music always played in the background.
My mother complied.
That Christmas there was a beautiful Italian-made pasta maker waiting for me under the tree. It was shiny and silver and as authentic as the red, white and green flag.
I embraced my new hobby with enthusiasm.
The only problem was, I was the only one who embraced my new hobby with enthusiasm. My pasta was good, from what I can recall of it, but my friends and family were unimpressed. No one was ever as excited to eat it as I was to make it.
Over time, the pasta machine found its place in the back of the cupboard, rarely to see the light of day. That was until a few years ago, when I was hosting a birthday party for my husband.
Anna and Alex came and brought along Anna's mother, Louise, who was about 85 at the time.
Like Anna, Louise's life is also largely about food and family — and of course her constant quest to find a ride to bingo.
For my husband's birthday, Louise presented him with two sheets of her homemade pizza. ''I didn't know what to buy,'' she said.
As the conversation passed from pizza to dough to flour to pasta, I mentioned to Louise that I too had made homemade pasta.
She looked at me with skepticism.
To prove myself, I opened the cupboard and dragged out my old friend. The box was still taped shut from my last move, but I pried it open and revealed the machine.
There it was, still silver and shiny.
''Oh,'' Louise gasped, cupping her hands around it. She smiled as she lifted the pasta maker out of the box in admiration.
''Oh,'' she gasped again, rubbing her hands across the shiny machine, ''She's a virgin.''
''Well, not exactly a virgin,'' I explained, ''She just hasn't seen much action lately.''
Louise smiled and we chatted about how she and Anna and I should get together to make pasta sometime. Later, I returned my pasta maker to the security of its virgin vault, where it has remained for the past several years.
But with World Pasta Day coming up, a day designed to promote the culinary and nutritional value of pasta, I'm thinking that maybe it's time to finally call Louise and Anna to set that pasta-making date.
My machine has been in the cupboard for a long while and she'd probably appreciate another roll in the flour.
Until next week, have fun in the kitchen and if you happen to be inspired to crank out some pasta of your own, remember to be gentle, especially if it's your first time.
Lisa A. Abraham can be reached at 330-996-3737 or labraham@thebeaconjournal.com.
When we marry, we get in-laws of all shapes and sizes.
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Posted 11:43 AM, 10/17/2008
In celebration of World Pasta Day on Saturday, October 25th, the Wheat Foods Council is also exploring pasta’s global influence with "World of Pastabilities." If you're interested in experiencing the “taste” of pasta in a variety of ethnic cuisines, visit www.wheatfoods.org where you will find educational information and authentic recipes for Italian, Mediterranean, Mexican, North African and Russian pasta dishes!
