My Grandma Pauline, was a quiet soft spoken woman of small stature. I can’t ever recall a time she raised her voice, or spoke ill of anyone. Grandpa on the other hand frightened small children when he was a crossing guard at the school. Most of the time if Grandma was miffed, she’d say “potatoes and onions” I’m not sure why, but that was her most frequent way of expressing frustration. However, if something was really awry she’d whisper under her breath Mannaggia Jezebel! Again, I had no idea who Jezabel was and it was only much later in life did I realize it was Italian for Damn it. Heck it’s possible Grandma didn’t know, because my sense is there would have been more potatoes and onions.
Me on the other hand, somehow I grew up cursing like a sailor . Not sure why. I can’t recall either (or any) of my parents swearing. But I certainly liked alliteration if not also George Carlin and I did play that record until it was worn out, so there is that. It would do me good to replace some of my salty sayings with my dear grandmother’s Italian phrases especially as we have grandsons around and they should grow up wondering what Mannaggia means at the very least they are less apt to get sent to the Principal’s office if they utter it on the playground. Long shaggy dog story short, not every dish we make is a success. You’d think after the epic fail at heart shapes in our sugar cookies that we’d try redeem ourselves with something spectacular.
But the internet is filled with perfect pitched pictures of money shot food morsels. As a chronically ill old woman, keeping it real isn’t a practice, it’s unavoidable destiny. Moreover, my daughter wanted to make sure we REMEMBERED that Semolina flour is not our friend. So I figured THIS WAY, maybe we’ll have a shot at remembering. This wasn’t the first time we made fresh pasta, though admittedly it’s been more than a few years. We had vague memories about it not going well last time. And a common theme that it was the semolina flour that was harder to work with. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t be Italian if I didn’t insist on buying semolina again. We tried three different variations on a theme. One batch was made with all semolina, one was metà a metà (which Grandma Pauline also said often and I gathered implied half and half though I swear it sounded more like metz-a-metz) and the last batch was all unbleached white flour.
The winner in terms of texture and “rollability” was the unbleached flour. Though yesterday, perhaps we were rushed for time and didn’t let them dry sufficiently before running through the slicing rollers, none of our pasta was nailed it meme worthy. The flavor however was lovely. And the fresh pasta sauce was perfect as usual. So that’s what we’ll go with here.
Mannaggia Pasta!
Ingredients
Instructions
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Place a couple TBL of olive oil in your pan and saute garlic slices briefly. Toss cherry tomatoes and cover for five minutes over medium heat. Stir and crush some of the tomatoes as they soften. Cook for another 5-10 minutes. Adding fresh basil and seasoning right before serving. Finish with a cup of boiling pasta water to thin the sauce, butter and parmesan if you like, and toss while pasta is hot.
