Pasta, amore mio

Let him cook now, let him cook.

An ode to pasta, my first love.

What started as a way to cook food for me because my mom told me to eat Uppit instead, turned into the essence of my comfort zone. So I went to my aunt’s place to ask her how white sauce pasta was made and the rest is history.

My way of making pasta went from plain old white sauce pasta with flour and amul cheese to pasta with cherry tomatoes, basil, and parmesan cheese.

I consider myself half-Italian at this point.

Pasta is more than food to me. More than starchy juicy sauce was stuck to it. Entangled with the pasta were my memories and also the juicy sauce. Every different type of pasta reminded me of different memory.

The cherry tomato one got me through jee, and late-night cravings, and the spinach one reminds me of the time when I cooked for my friend Lahari and we watched scary movies and chilled. The aglio olio one reminds me of the time when I had put the pasta in a lunch box and gave it to her, and even though we had just met a few times, it was just my way of showing her I like cooking for her and that she matters. This time, it was entangled with pyaar(love) as well.

Trying to make tastier kinds of pasta was all just a ruse to impress my sister. I was always intrigued by how food she was at it (see what I did there).

It would remind me of all the times she cooked and I helped, all the times she blackmailed and I obliged.

All the unequal partitions of food, all the late night tv shows, and all the times we found one another cooking when we thought no one was in the kitchen.

Too bad she had to move to Canada.

After all these years of making pasta, I still can’t cook for one, because a part of me still ends up cooking for her.

Over the years, pasta became a necessity in my chill session, in my attempt to relax.

The pasta went really well with a comforting show. It was like a match made in heaven. Like Phil and Claire. Like Darshan and Rakshita.

Like pasta and a comforting tv show.

Cooking was my way of showing people how much they meant to me. Cooking with them helped me bond with them. We were making something together. Whether the food was good or bad, it was always fun.

Pasta will always be my first love.
Pasta mi amor (it means my love in Italian, I googled it)

Thank you and have a nice day.