The tittle says it all....I love pasta and making pasta is a labor of love.

Now, in Italian cooking you can basically use two types of pasta- homemade pasta or you can opt for factory made pasta. Choosing one over the other depends solely on the pasta sauce you are using. If someone tells you one is always better than the other, that person does not know what they are saying. There are certain sauces and sauce bases that works well with factory made pasta and not so well with homemade pasta and vice versa.

What is the rule of thumb then?

- Factory made pasta works well with sauces that have olive oil as their vehicle, such as seafood sauces and a variety of light, vegetable sauces and some butter-based sauces.
- Homemade pasta works well with most butter-based sauces and sauces that use cream because it absorbs the sauces better than factory made pasta.

This rule should be followed strictly if you want to respect the ingredient and if you want the dish to turn out right. The thing that most people do not understand is that in a pasta dish, the sauce is just the condiment and the pasta the main dish (I heard this from one of my idols Mario Batali). That is why when you are in Italy do not order Meat-ball spaghetti but Spaghetti with Meat-balls (with the meat balls on the side not tossed with the pasta). This very simple idea is the main reason why you have to pick the right pasta for the type of sauce you are using. You should not let the condiment (the sauce) ruin the main dish (the pasta).

Some people say there is really not much difference in the final dish- well to someone not educated enough about Italian cuisine that may be true- but we should all be educated. Most people opt for factory made pasta for all types of sauces simply because homemade pasta is hard to make- my answer to this excuse is "if you do not have enough patience and passion to sweat it out in the kitchen then you have no right calling your dish Italian!" Italian cooking is about passion and patience and respect. Yes I admit homemade pasta is really really really hard to make but at the end of the day it is all worth your time.


Making your own pasta allows you to prepare the dish right because you can adjust the consistency of your pasta to suit your sauce, it also allows you to adjust the thickness of your pasta, and most importantly you are respecting the recipe and doing it right! If you are too lazy to make homemade pasta and the recipe your are planning on making calls for it you have two choices- 1. chose a different dish or 2. go to your local Italian delis shop and buy pre-packed homemade pasta (its the lesser evil).

When you finish cooking the pasta "al dente" do not let it sit in your colander! Most people make this mistake thinking they have to let the pasta cool before adding in the sauce- this is wrong! It is wrong because once the pasta cools it is going to be harder for you to allow the sauce to coat the pasta all over because most of them are already sticking to each other. Secondly a cold pasta does not absorb your sauce that well anymore. When you are preparing your pasta, make sure your sauce is ready and once the pasta is done toss them together right away and serve them hot. It is better for you to prepare the sauce ahead of time and just heat them once the pasta is ready- not the other way around- remember the pasta is the main dish not the sauce. Once served, you have to eat the pasta right away- do not wait for it to turn cold. In Italy it is bad manners to let the pasta cool right in front of you.

These are some of the reasons why this blog is tittled Pasta Amore because you have to treat it with love and respect both as a cook and as a diner.

This post is dedicated to my favorite ingredient- TOMATO. This red plump veggie-full-of-goodness does wonders to your dish. It can accommodate any of your whims in terms of texture, taste, smell and even the look of your final plate. It can be prepared in any way and can be Incorporated in any part of your meal. Tomato is also widely viewed as a staple for Italian cooking so you will see a lot of tomatoes in this blog in the future- this is why it is important to know its history.

Tomato
- scientific name: "Solanum lycopersicum".

Tracing the history of Tomato, one will find a very big surprise- it is not Native in Europe where it is used so much in Italian cooking and Spanish cooking- in fact it is a Native of South America. They say that genetic evidence shows that the modern Tomato's progenitor were herbaceous green plants with small green fruit with a center of diversity in the highlands of Peru. In fact early Aztec writings show that tomato was consumed by their society and was usually prepared with pepper, corn and salt.

There is large disagreement as to how Tomato ended up in Europe, some say it was the explorer Cortez who first brought Tomato to Europe after he colonized the Aztec city of Tenochtítlan (Modern day New Mexico) in 1521. Some say that it was Christopher Columbus, an Italian working for Spain, who first brought back the fruity vegetable as early as 1493. So clearly there is a tug-of-war between Spain and Italy as to who brought it to Europe first, but one thing is settled though, it was Spain who distributed it through-out the world. Using its armada and trading power, Spain distributed tomato through out its colony from the Caribbean to the Philippines. It also became widely used in European cooking because it grew well in the Mediterranean climate. The first cook book to feature tomato as an ingredient was discovered in Naples dated 1692, but even here there is still uncertainty- some people claim that the author got the recipe fro Spanish sources. In Florence tomato was first widely used as a table-top decoration and was not incorporated into their dish until early 18th Century! Imagine eating Tuscany's Ossobuco without Tomato- that would be weired- although they did before they decided to use that tabletop decoration as an ingredient.

Tomato has two very basic flavors- sweet or sour (acidic). Now neither one is better than the other because it will all depend on what you want to achieve in your dish- but most commonly used is sweet. To get the sweetness out of the tomato the best approach is to grill it first before you puree it. Grilling takes away the acidity and leaves you only with its lovely sweetness. It is also a great ingredient to use for braising meat- like ossobuco. If using tomato as braising agent do not grill it, just chop them into small pieces and let it dissolve its juices in your pan. Tomato can also be eaten raw like in many salads. It has so many uses in so many different culinary traditions allowing it to become so widespread.

So, in short, tomato is a vegetable not a fruit.


***References:
- Wikipedia
- Marcela Hazan "Classical Italian Cooking"
- Antonio Carluccio "Simple Cooking"

At first I thought antipasto meant before the pasta because I always thought of Italian cooking as all about pasta. But I was wrong! Dead wrong! Antipasto means before the entire meal- but if I had it my way I say antipasto means before the feast because Italian cooking is way more than just pasta. So, to start off I will introduce you with some of the antipasto that I have prepared over the last few months.

What I like most about antipasto is how it titillates your pallet and gets you ready for the rest of the meal. This is the purpose that it has to serve -nothing more and nothing less. An antipasto fails if it creates too much contrast to the entire meal. I say this because I believe there should be harmony in your dinner table all the time- you should not end your evening saying I liked the chicken but I hate the pork or leaving the table asking what you had for antipasto. The antipasto is like the setting of a play or the introduction in a novel. It will set the mood for the entire meal but not overpower the other dishes. It should leave you eager, but not hungry, for the next dish.

In Italy the antipasto can be made from fresh veggies tossed in olive oil. It can also be composed of cured meat with a complimenting cheese. Its range of flavor is endless- from salty, sour, savoury, meaty, fishy, sweet...etc. The most important thing to remember about preparing antipasto is to use only fresh ingredients. Although this is true for any part of the meal it is most important to antipasto because most of these dishes require very little to sometimes no cooking at all. This means that the range of flavour I mentioned above comes from the natural flavor of the ingredients and not some clever "french-inspired" manipulation of the dish to create some out of this world flavor.

The English have their pan-cakes, the french have their crepes, and the Italians have their Crespelle- I have tried all of them and I am hands down to Crespelle. Yes I am biased but for a good reason- pan-cakes are boring: spread the butter on top, pour your favorite syrup and eat. Crepes are good but its what's inside it that makes it good and it is too thin. Crespelle is like a cross-over between the two- it is like pan-cake in texture and it is like Crepe in flexibility. Like all breakfast dishes Crespelle is easy to make.

This version of Crespelle utilizes two of my most favorite Italian ingredient, Parmesan and tomato. I made the Crespelle sheets the night before and since I always have tomato sauce in stand by this dish did not require that much preparation- except for making the bechamel sauce. This Crespelle variation is a three layer sheet lined with tomato sauce and bechamel sauce with ham strips. After they were layered I baked them in the oven for about 5-10 mins just to allow the tomato and bechamel to be absorbed by the crespelle sheets. The result was this dish- a full breakfast meal that perks you up just right. The taste reminds you of something like lasagna because of the tomato and bechamel sauce combo. Aside from being a powerful breakfast item crespelle has other uses like Crepes, but for now it played its role as breakfast of champions.

This is my motto in life it means: "Live, See, Eat and Love"- the Italian way. I am a full blooded Filipino and proud of it, but deep inside me I feel a strong attraction to anything Italian.

This small boot-like peninsula in the Mediterranean is full of so many things good and beautiful. It is no surprise that over its long and rugged history it has been invaded and ruled and owned by different foreign powers. It has a long and very brutal history of struggle, grandeur and then down-fall. Some say it has been owned and ruled for so many years by different races but its own people. This is why the contrast between Italy's 5 major regions is so stark that they would not be able to converse using their own dialects- although they say this contrast is much less now after World War II.

The geography of Italy is also very diverse- from the Alpine north, the Central valleys and the coastal shores of the Mediterranean. This creates a wonderful contrast in gastronomic experience as you hop from one region to the other. Like one of my office-mates (who is Italian) told me- people in the Northern part of Italy eat Polenta a lot and use it in so many different ways, but serve that to people in the South and they will tell you they do not it Polenta because to them it is food for the pigs.

This contrast is like heaven to a globe-trotting gastronome and is like a gold mine of knowledge for an aspiring cook like myself. This is why I love Italian cooking- it has so much to offer in such a simple way.

In this blog I will show you some of the Italian dishes that I have already prepared and will prepare in the future- consider this a window into an aspiring cook's life. Cooking is a passion for me, not just a hobby. It relaxes me, it keeps my mind away from the "serious" stuff in life because I am a man who believes that we Live to see, eat and love. This is my attempt at living that motto- hopefully soon I will be able to see Italy, to taste the Olive oil in Verona, the Parmigiano-Reggiano in Emilia-Romagna, the Risotto in Venice and Lombardy, the Bottarga in Sardinia, the white truffles in Alba, the Pane carasau in Sardinia with Su zurette, and the desserts in Venice.

I could go on and on and on about what I want to eat- but lets set that aside for another day, as for now lets get on with the cooking. I hope you will enjoy this blog and hopefully you also get inspired to take on the challenge of the kitchen.