WELL HERE WE ARE, HUH? HERE THE FUCK WE ARE.

Just a bunch of bullshit left and right, isn’t it? Stupid bullshit. Sad bullshit. Infuriating bullshit. Toilet paper bullshit. I HATE IT HERE!!!!

It feels like I should, of course, address the Covid in the room, but I am not a scientist, epidemiologist, or public health official, so I have nothing useful to offer you. But I will say these three things: 

1) Wash your hands!!! Target was fresh out of hand sanitizer and yet the soap aisle was ROBUST because nobody can follow directions.

2) Now would be a good time to get into the habit of flushing with the toilet seat down so as not to be DISGUSTING.

3) You cannot police other people’s behavior through tweets and Facebook posts.

I’ve had a number of people ask if I’ve just been making and eating lots of pasta during this lockdown, but I have not! In part because I was eating a lot of other stuff like a maniac, (I have made four batches of caramelized onion dip so far) and I can’t live like that. Also, pasta, I’ve realized, isn’t a great solo sport. Sure, I’ve whipped together half the normal dough recipe before and treated myself to a too-large bowl of fresh pasta. However, as cheesy as it sounds, I’ve realized that pasta is better when shared with others–the same valuable lesson Diane Lane’s character learned in the *perfect* film, Under the Tuscan Sun. Also, you usually have to use the whole can of tomatoes and what am I supposed to do with all that extra sauce? It may not be possible to have too much sauce if you are, say, a sad boi rapper, but it absolutely is if you’re a woman living alone who doesn’t like leftovers. 

THAT SAID, I did make Alison Roman’s “A Very Good Lasagna” and then had to give half of it away because it was SO MUCH LASAGNA. Speaking of which, Alison Roman, man. This is her time. Let us raise her name in gratefulness as she has not only kept us fed and satisfied, but has also helped us waste hours in the kitchen, helping to take our minds off of the nightmare that is life.   

BUT THIS IS NOT ABOUT LASAGNA. Another pasta narrative is afoot. 

I finally decided to undertake a pasta project. It needed to be delicious, duh, but also time consuming. I’ve made some pretty difficult and time-consuming pasta in my somewhat limited pasta-making days. Sometimes it is worth all that effort and sometimes it, like, tastes good and shit, but you didn’t need to do all that. Let us see on which side this one falls.

I bought the Pasta Grannies cookbook some time ago, but haven’t really dug in deep yet. The only thing I’d made before this was the “Pasqualina and Maria’s Tagliatelle With Tomato and Anchovy Sauce”. Now, I know there’s really no other way to say that, but lordy, what a mouthful. 

It’s this extremely tasty tomato sauce that’s finished with breadcrumbs and walnuts. I assume I just forgot to blog about it because it was very good and worth sharing.

Oh, wait, I remember why I didn’t blog about it. 

BECAUSE I ONLY TOOK TERRIBLE PICTURES LIKE THIS UGGO. 

I had a couple friends over and was very eager to eat, so the pictures were not a priority and while I know that you all come to Fancy Pasta Bitch for the banter and shit, not the carefully staged images, I just couldn’t go through with it. 

ANYWAY, today is all about “Cristina’s Tortellini In Broth”. One of the last meals I had in a restaurant before all this his started was at Alimento, where they have this truly phenomenal and famous tortellini in brudo dish. During that meal, my dining partner and I ordered a second serving of tortellini while still eating our first one. Perhaps the only higher compliment that exists is: “You’re giving me Rihanna vibes.” 

Dear lord, I’m not even at the making of the pasta yet. CAN YOU TELL THAT MY CONTACT WITH HUMAN BEINGS HAS BEEN VERY LIMITED RECENTLY? To start, I had to make an absolutely enormous amount of dough. Truly stupid. Stable genius, stupid. Even idiots don’t want you speaking publicly, stupid. Do a shot of bleach, stupid. And by “enormous,” I mean about double the usual amount. But it felt crazy. I was pulling it together as one big ball and finally had to split it into two because my hands couldn’t handle all that. 

I can’t tell if this looks like a lot, but it’s a lot. 

Also as you can see, I wasn’t able to get the dough as smooth as I wanted. I mean, I could have, but I got very tired of kneading. Once the dough rests, it tends to come together, so I wasn’t going to stress about it. 

Onto the filling, which consists of prosciutto, ground pork, and mortadella–an item I had never purchased in my life. I had to grind my own pork loin in the food processor because we are RUSTIC out here. What’s next? Churning our own butter? (Lol NEVER, because churning butter reminds me of Colonial Williamsburg, quite literally the worst place in America.) 

Parmesan cheese and an egg helps the filling come together and here it is, even though it looks bad. 

This is also, I should note, a shit ton of filling, which should have been a clue. It may not look like a lot, but you gotta cut the pasta sheets pretty small so these lil babies can only fit a lil dab of filling. CASE AND POINT:

I will now call attention to the fact that this isn’t an even square, which is ideal, but I got tired of measuring shit and just decided to eyeball it. It’s pretty easy to course correct with the folding so, ultimately, it didn’t really matter. 

Wow, look at that. TIME TO MAKE FIVE MILLION MORE.

I started folding my pope hat bundles while standing, like a FOOL and eventually had to sit at my dining table for the majority of assembly. To help pass the time, I fired up some episodes of Seinfeld–a show I never watched when it aired because I was a child, and didn’t feel compelled to watch later in life because I’m not white, so nobody really brings it up to me all that often. Still, let me be the first to say: It’s a pretty good show!!

You know what is not a pretty good show? Watching me make tortellini after tortellini. What a tedious-ass journey. 

“How long could this possibly take?” I thought. 

“Wow, I only half of the filling left,” I said to myself, “I’m gonna be done soon.” 

“Is anything worth it?????” I eventually screamed into the void. 

I would say the entire undertaking took about four hours–from the first egg cracked to the first tortellini entering my mouth. At a minimum, it was two and a half hours of folding. 

Now we’ve got the broth part. I was going to make my own meat broth, following the recipe in the book, but then I was like, “lol why? No. I don’t want to do that.”

So I cooked the pasta in some chicken broth and you know what? IT WORKED.

I then had about 300,000 tortellini left over after this rather generous serving. I made a couple of socially distant drop-offs to friends because, as beautiful as they look and as tasty as they are, no individual human needs that much tortellini. And pasta is for sharing with friends. Which will happen again one day, in some form or another. 

Please remember that. Things are bad. Very bad. But life will go on because there is nothing else to do but keep living. And I don’t even mean that in an uplifting way. Just that, like, we HAVE to live. There’s nothing else to do here on Earth. Until we die, we must live. And if the world ends, then we’ll all be gone, so I wouldn’t worry about it too much???

Was that helpful? Probably not. But here’s some more pasta.  

WOOO LORDY.

Today is the last day of 2019 and, frankly, it feels like the last day of 2019 if 2019 lasted seven years. There were points over the past few months whereI thought: “Oh, this year is legitimately never going to end. We just all live in 2019 now. Forever.” For the past week I haven’t been able to stop humming Beyonce’s line from “Ape Shit” (“I can’t believe we made it”) because TRULY TRULY I wasn’t sure it was going to happen.

Still, feelings are a bit mixed over here because personally, I didn’t have a bad year–quite the opposite in many arenas. I did some good professional things, (by the way, a moratorium on calling things “personal news” when you’re announcing a professional accomplishment because  that’s not what words mean) and I travelled a lot. But even with all the good things I did and that happened to me, there was still this constant cloud of doom hovering above my head because this country is being run by a deranged Furby and nobody listens to scientists and like, death is real.

On the other hand, do I feel optimistic about 2020? I mean, I like the way it looks and at least it’s not 2019. (Like seriously what the fuck????) But I’m also concerned that things might get worse because a lesson I learned in 2019 is that things can always get worse……

But anyway, onto pasta. So, I bought a truffle. As my last big pasta-making experience of the year I wanted to go ALL OUT like an asshole or Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems. I wanted CHAOTIC OPULENCE. So, what oozes luxury and consumption? What is one of Oprah’s favorite things? You see where we’re going here…and also I told you at the top of this graf. Yeah, I bought a whole ass truffle and I don’t want to talk about the [redacted] I spent on it.there she is. 

The thing about having a WAT (whole ass truffle) is it means you’ve got to step up everything else along with it. You can’t serve decent quality cheese with your truffle. You can’t just take a lap through the Trader Joe’s wine section and grab something between $10.99 and $15.99. Everything else has to be worthy of being with the truffle. To that end, I bought the expensive ass cultured butter, the big ass very organic eggs, the imported cheese (I usually do that though because the word “fancy” ain’t in this blog for no reason). I threw down for some wine that was not cheap and was supposed to pair well with the truffle, but ultimately ended up being kind of weird tasting–like if cognac was a wine.

But that’s what a WAT deserves. According to Marcella Hazan and the rest of the internet, the best pairing with a white winter truffle is a simple fettuccine alfredo. Here is a picture of my fettuccine that I at the time I thought came out much better:

I’m just going to tell you right now, the cooking shots from this project aren’t that impressive because I was so concerned about getting everything right for the WAT that finding a good angle on my pan of noodles mattered about as much as Michael Bloomberg’s presidential campaign. Let’s just take a look at that beautiful, voluptuous fungus again.

This was by far my most stressful pasta-creating experience because, again, I did not want to fuck up this [redacted] dollar ingredient. And on top of that, I was out here preparing plates for three other people like a goddamn line cook. But again, it’s what the WAT truffle deserved.

I should clarify something that isn’t really that important but is important to me. Earlier I said I was making Marcella Hazan’s fettuccine alfredo. In fact, I made her fettuccine with cream sauce and yes, there’s a difference. The regular fettuccine alfredo is just butter, water and, cheese. The groundbreaking additional ingredient here is…I’ll let you figure it out. I just wanted to make sure this WAT had a full, creamy sauce to socialize with. And boy did they ever kiki:

Yeah.

SHOULD WE TRY ANOTHER ANGLE? MARCELLA TOLD ME TO “BLANKET” THE PASTA IN TRUFFLES SO I WAS LIKE, “OK LET’S AFGHAN THIS BITCH”.

Now is the time when I usually tell you how everything tasted but, like, lol, obviously it was delicious. This was the largest amount of actual truffles I’ve ever had in one sitting and if I’m going to make any resolutions for 2020, it’s going to be to live a life where I can regularly blanket my food in an obscene amount of truffles. 

But back to that impending sense of doom. Obviously the worst thing about is the waiting and not know the exact details of the doom to come. Like, if we knew when the ice caps were fully going to engulf us, we could, ostensibly, put together some sort of plan or at least start wrapping our minds around it and finally telling people how we really feel about them since we’re all going to be engulfed by ice cap water in nine days.

Going into 2020, I have some guesses about how things are going to go, but who can be sure? Like, after reading this book, I’m pretty sure Kim Jong Un isn’t going to bomb us. I know they’re probably never going to recreate Cats again. There’s the every day doom of maybe getting hit by a bus or something but I can’t worry about that too much. If there’s a lesson here, (besides not letting the wine shop lady talk you into a $50 of wine that she described as “complicated”) maybe it’s that’s worrying and caring are two different things. I care about climate change and that Rihanna may never give us a new album ever again. And because I care, I will do what I can to stop any dooms I see coming. But the worrying is a whole other thing that is just stressful as hell and usually doesn’t serve me well. I can’t let the worry consume me because I’ll probably have a brain aneurism. Instead, I will consume pasta.

Happy New Year,

xoxo Fancy Pasta Bitch

 Do you smell that? Crisp air? Ripe apples? Can you hear the sound of wool sweaters coming out of storage and Timbaland boots getting to breathe again?  WELL I DON’T BECAUSE I LIVE IN LOS ANGELES. 

Look, I really enjoy living in LA, largely because I appreciate it for what it is, unlike surly New Yorkers (many of whom aren’t even actually from New York) who move to the city of angels and complain about it not having good bagels–a complaint that makes about as much sense as asking the same question when traveling to, say, Tokyo. Anyway, the weather is a major part of that. Still, one of the most jarring things about the near-constant forecast of 75-80 degrees and sunny, is that it’s a bit harder to mark the passage of time. You sort of have to remind yourself that February and May are different months because looking outside your window really ain’t gonna tell you much. 

HOWEVER, somewhat recently, the weather in Los Angeles dipped below 80 degrees and I leapt at the opportunity to pretend that it’s fall and make some cozy food. (I have also, against sound financial judgement, been buying sweaters and jackets and socks and I’m not exactly sure where I think I’m going.) Initially I was going to make cacio e pepe because I wanted pasta but wasn’t in the mood for a great deal of effort, but when I looked in my fridge I had a few outlier ingredients that I thought deserved a chance to be consumed. I had just enough heavy cream left from another recipe and I had about 4/5 of a lemon. (Don’t ask. Ok, do ask. I use lemon mostly for tea and I don’t ever need the entire lemon for a cup of tea so I usually just slice of small piece at a time and at this point I hadn’t gotten very far. It’d been a coffee kind of week.) 

Considering what I had on hand, I remembered this recipe for pasta al limone. Not gonna lie, at first i thought i could just make regular cacio e pepe and squeeze some lemon on top and get a similar effect, but this proved to be  different and more involved. 

As always, here we begin:

Made some dough.

I’m sure any actual chef would tell you this but it’s hard to overestimate how much easier it makes cooking when you just prep shit in little bowls before hand. In particular with pasta, you have to move so fast once the pasta as cooked as opposed to like, chili where you can keep throwing stuff in whenever and it’ll generally come out fine. Also it’s fun and makes me feel like I’m on a cooking show. So yes, easier and more fun, but you also end up using 30-40% dishes than you would otherwise which, I’m going to be honest, is a pain. 

As you can see it’s all rather straightforward–cheese, butter, lemon juice and lemon zest.. I seem to have forgotten to include the heavy cream here but it’s all for the best because cream is not that photogenic!

I made bigoli because, like Lizzo, they’re both thick bitches that need tempo. (Gotta say, I feel a little cheap using a Lizzo reference because literally who isn’t throwing down Lizzo references these days? But at least I didn’t say bigoli is 100% that pasta because then I’d have to shut down this blog out of embarrassment and profound lameness.) 

Here are the noodles going into the pot because I was trying to think of a different and slightly more interesting shot than my usual pasta hanging out on the sticks. 

IS THIS INTERESTING? (Yes, my nail art is great.)

The unfortunate thing about this sauce, I learned, is that it’s really not a lot to look at while putting it together. You really just mix the butter and cream and it’s just a pan of whiteness (*enter a gentle but deserved white people joke here*).

You can’t see it at all but the lemon zest and lemon juice are in there I promise.

When I first looked at the recipe, I didn’t think the cream would make much of a difference in this dish but I guess it sort of is….it’s creamy. (But you can also make pasta cream with just cheese, water, and strong wrist muscles so, calories, I guess.) It certainly is creamier. I dunno man. 

Look, this ain’t the most beautiful or interesting plate of food I’ve never made but I’ll be goddamned it if didn’t do the trick. It’s basically the lemon pepper wings of pasta–a perfect flavor combination that we need to start incorporating into more foods.

This was my second serving. At some point, I was like: “Am I just going to eat all of this pasta?” When I was 15 my friend told me that a nutritionist told her that if you’ve already eating too much of something unhealthy you might as well finish the whole bag of chips or whatever because your body can’t process that many calories and at least you’ll get over the craving. In the light of adulthood, that absolutely doesn’t sound like it makes any sense, but I readopted hat philosophy for this pasta.

That is my way of saying: I ate it all. I ate all the pasta. Like, a pound of pasta. Because it’s winter and I’m a bear, apparently. And by winter I mean it’s 65 degrees at night.

Sometimes, in my existential moments, (basically every waking moment of my life at this point) I think about that fact that most likely, I’ll live in Los Angeles for the rest of my life. I’m going to Europe in a few weeks mainly so I can wear a coat and all the warm shit I’ve been buying. External markers of time are nice and also not. Weather changes do remind me that everything is cyclical and everything ends, which is helpful to keep in mind. At the same time, without those markers, you do feel somewhat less bogged down the restraints of time and living because you’re sort of not really thinking about it. It’s as if we’re all transversing an endless expanse that you just have to keep moving through–moving forward–until you get to WOW WHO AM I ECKHART TOLLE???? 

Time is wild. Eat some pasta. 

Hello. 

I know I know.

I KNOW.

I’ve been away. If it helps, I’ve literally been away…like, in other countries. Which, as it turns out, makes pasta-making difficult and inconvenient. But don’t worry, I discovered that Europeans do not give out prescription medication as liberally as their friends in America, so I’m back stateside for a while and very hungry. 

Having been gone, I was not super in the mood to cook. For one, you gotta eat all the food in your fridge before you leave for an extended trip. I’d think about throwing together some pasta, but then I’d discover that I was one egg short of what I needed and obviously I can’t go buy one egg and I don’t talk to my neighbors, so there goes that idea. And when I got back from a trip, I was feeling lazy because life is hard and Postmates is easy. 

But it’s fully summer now. It’s hot. The living is easy (LOL SURE) and I had a shit ton of basil I didn’t know what to do with. Would you allow me to complain about something stupid for a minute? (Of course you will! This whole blog is basically just me complaining about stupids. Yes, stupids.) 

I primarily shop at two grocery stores–Ralph’s and Trader Joe’s. While every other herb is allowed the dignity to be bought in a sensible-sized bunch, Ralphs sells basil either in some giant tub or as an actual plant. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve bought a whole ass plant with no intention of letting it grow, used all the leaves, then thrown it away. It feels wasteful and also stupid because the plant obviously costs more than a normal-sized amount of basil. At Trader Joe’s, they also sell that shit in a giant tub. And then you’re like, “What the hell am I gonna do with all this basil? I just wanted to liven up my heirloom tomatoes. I don’t need all this!!!!” But I bought the tub anyway. And after two tomato salads, I still had a lot of basil left so this was my extrememly longwinded way of saying we’re making pesto. 

DAMN I’VE MISSED THIS. 

I decided to make mafaldine noodles because WHY ARE YOU EVEN ASKING ME THAT QUESTION? Actually, I have a reason why. It’s because I recently had a very good truffle pasta situation at a restaurant in London called Gloria and they used malfadine and it was on my mind. I’m not sure what Italian purists would think of this combination, (Marcella suggests spaghetti or potato gnocchi for pesto) but here we are. I can only be me. Me, as I am. 

Having now mentioned her name three times, let me remind you that this is a Marcella Hazan household so I threw three tablespoons of butter in to that bitch. (“That bitch”, of course, being the pesto.) While we’re on the subject, can we talk about how butter is CRAZY? It is so good and so helpful just with like, life. Who came up with butter? Thank you for that, whoever you were!!!

Totally unrelated but actually extrememly related, I also made a cake because when the mood to cook hits me, it hits me hard. I’ll either want to make a FEAST or something super complicated. I wanna bake the bread and maybe some cookies too and really find the best way to utilize this excellent and expensive cheese I crossed town to buy. Of course, about half the time, I realize “Lolz I don’t want to bake goddamn bread,” and then I just buy some at the store. In this case, however, I made a cake as well. More specifically, I made that strawberry cake from Smitten Kitchen that I’ve seen approximately four million times on my Instagram timeline. 

It looks great and tastes good. Also, cake is perfect and no cake has ever been bad. 

OK NOW WE ARE COOKING. The theme of today is butter and a constant existentially worry about how to best use our time on Earth. All that to say, I added more butter when I went to add the pesto. We’ve been over this, guys. 

Look at that ART. I gotta say, I really like these noodles. They’ve got personality, ya know? They’re like if fettuccine said: “I’m going to express myself today and by the way, I’m feeling a lil playful. Tee hee.” Also, they catch the pesto in those ridges very nicely. 

That said, the pasta lord giveth and she taketh away. The one downside to the malfadine is that it’s kinda hard to twirl. Oh, what’s a twirl, you ask? Hopefully though you didn’t ask that because if you’re reading this blog and you don’t know what a pasta twirl is, you’ve got some serious things to work out. This, obviously, is a twirl. 

I tried to do a big one but failed, so I settled for a few smaller twirl-esque shapes. 

I MEAN COME ON. 

In the spirit of transparency, I added some burrata on top because I PLAY TO WIN. It was, however, less photogenic than I’d hoped, so here it is as a somewhat better angle.

And now I’m throwing you a motherfuckin close-up because I want you to FEEL the burrata. I want to burn this image of the burrata into the insides of your eyelids. I want you to have nightmares about this burrata where you’re like, “Hey, I goddamn love burrata but right now for some reason I don’t have any burrata and it’s a NIGHTMARE.” 

Let me tell you, folks, this felt good. It tasted good too. But mostly it felt good to get back in the game. In between traveling and feeling very lucky that I was born a human being, but then wondering if it’s even possible to be born as something else considering this particular consciousness is inherently human, I missed my pasta.  

Oh hello. Welcome to 2019. I know we’ve been in it for a minute, (lol it’s basically February what happened) but this is the first Fancy Pasta Bitch blog of 2019 and wow, we’re still doing this!

It wouldn’t be a new year if I wasn’t trying to recreate the facade of Instagram in real life. Oh, you’d like more of an explanation? Fine. For about a week the same picture kept popping up in my Instagram “Discover” feed which, by the way, needs to “discover” some more insight into my taste and interests because makeup tutorials that involve drawing on a unibrow and then wiping the middle away are not what I need in my life.

Anyway, different versions of this picture kept popping up:

And I was like “shit, that looks good!” I have no idea if those big chunks of mozzarella are really necessary to this dish, but I also know that mozzarella and pasta can, at best, be underwhelming but can never truly be bad. After weeks of Instagram’s algorithm taunting me, I finally decided to make this pasta. AND BOY WAS IT A JOURNEY.

From the beginning things weren’t going my way. For starters, I could not get anyone to come eat this pasta with me. Now, I didn’t try that hard, but I did invite a handful of people over and they were all busy with things like “other friends” and “birthday parties” and nonsense like “babies” and “work that I need to get done in order to feed myself.” It was upsetting but then I was like, “Screw those bitches. I’m eating my pasta by myself anyway!” I felt pretty good for about five seconds then a wave of loneliness washed over me and I started calling this dish “lonely pasta.” So, that’s fun. 

Shockingly, I haven’t dipped my toe into any Ina Garten recipes on this blog yet so now seems like the time. However, almost immediately, I remembered why I  don’t rush to her recipes because they always call for a bunch of random ass expensive ingredients. She literally lists “good olive oil” in the recipe which, sure, but also, you’re just using it to simmer onions so how much of a difference could it really make? Speaking of onions, her recipe also calls for a “Spanish onion.” I don’t know what that is so I played “Despacito” while they simmered and hoped that would do the trick. 

So there I am, simmering onions and garlic for my lonely pasta and things are going alright. Obviously the soundtrack for the evening is Ariana Grande and my ponytail princess was lifting my spirits especially when she was paired with the bottle of Chianti that I no longer had to share with anyone. HOWEVER, an irritant reared its head in the form of my laziness. 

There was a bottle of alcohol that I glanced at from ten feet away and assumed was tequila, largely because gross, why would I have vodka sitting around my house? Instead of taking the 2.5 seconds it would have required for me to double check the label before I left, I assumed I had no vodka and skipped my ass to the store and purchased a bottle of vodka. (So yes, I do have vodka sitting around my house.) As you can probably guess, I now have two cheap bottles of vodka in my home. 

But back to the good stuff. The key to this recipe is the roasting. You throw together the onions, garlic and tomatoes and then roast everyone for 90 minutes. Much like Marcella Hazan’s perfect tomato sauce– I assume it’s that slow and low cooking that makes the tomatoes say: “HEY BITCH I’M REALLY FEELING MYSELF NOW. EAT ME.” 

While I let the tomatoes get their freak on in the oven, I turn to making my pasta and disaster strikes. Truly, this is not my night. My cooking is rebelling against my lonely pasta, I guess. The problem here is that my dough decided to be a complete asshole. It was dry and dusty like my skin after 36 hours in Vegas. I have to keep using water just to get it all to stick together. It is annoying and hard to knead and nothing like the play dough texture of my eggy 7 yolk pasta. I don’t care how many egg whites I waste, I’m using no less than 7 egg yolks in my pasta from now on!!! Before you can ask, I did not take any individual pictures of the pasta because frankly it doesn’t deserve any shoutouts or acclaim for how it behaved. 

Alright, we know the dough is being stupid but now we’re onto the foolishness of the actual pasta. I purchased a capellini attachment which, admittedly wasn’t super necessary–capellini is really just thinner spaghetti. But as soon as I start putting it through the machine, this bullshit happened:

I DID NOT LOVE THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

From what I was able to gather, this attachment, unlike all the others, required some assembly before use and obviously I didn’t know what because what? The one upside to this mishap is that I wasted a quarter of my pasta dough sending it through this butcher shop, which made it somewhat less noticeable how lonely my lonely pasta was. (Speaking of which, have you ever divided a recipe into quarters? That shit is bleak.) 

Anyway, I decide to use my spaghetti attachment instead because spaghetti doesn’t betray me and it’s all sort of the same at this point anyway. 

BACK TO A POSITION: The sauce is looking gooooood. The recipes calls for you to transfer the cooked sauce into a blender to smooth it out which is difficult and has always sounded quite dangerous to me. Also that’s what immersion blenders are for so I use that instead. 

Then it’s time for cream and some fresh oregano and PAUSE.

This recipe calls for dried oregano and fresh oregano because of course it does. (PICK A LANE, INA!!!!) This made me realize that I wasn’t at all confident about what fresh oregano looks like. I am willing to admit that truth to you, DEAR readers!! Here’s what it looks like: 

Now we all know!

Ina’s recipe doesn’t call for any butter with the sauce, but it also calls for penne and I ain’t doing that. Obviously I throw in some butter and a bit of the pasta water when I add the spaghetti because I am not an amateur over here. 

The Instagram pictures that I’m basing this off of calls the dish “capellini with vodka sauce and fresh mozzarella.” They really just threw some chunks of mozzarella in there which, I mean, why not? In the process of trying to acquire some particularly fresh mozzarella, I discovered that there’s a factor that makes excellent mozzarella just miles from me out in Hawthorne, CA. I had this whole dream of going down to the factory and watching the cheese being made and getting some deeply fresh mozzarella and then I was like, “Lolz, I don’t wanna do all that.” Don’t get me wrong, I would like to one day and I’m sure it’s very cool but I’m not in a position to waste a whole day on that. Also, they sell it at Whole Foods. 

This shit is good though!

I sort of forgot about the mozzarella when I was cooking the pasta and probably should have added it while I was sautéing everything but, again, I forgot so I just threw it on top and mixed it in later. Who cares!

A brief aside: I was looking into exactly what type of wine would go best with this sauce since it does have have both cream and tomatoes and it turns out it doesn’t really matter–both red and white can work for this. One chef suggested champagne and I loved it because as far as I’m concerned, champagne goes with everything: moments of celebration, moments of sadness, a bowl of cereal the morning after a night that may or may not have involved dancing on a bar. 

Although I take the risk of being accused of being in bed with Big Champagne, let me say it again: champagne goes with everything!!! So I got some champagne because i was like, “You know what, bitch? Treat your lonely pasta eating self.” So I had both chianti and champagne with my pasta for the official taste test and I can conclude that it doesn’t matter what you’re drinking. Alcohol is great. 

MAN THIS IS A LONG BLOG, HUH? Ok, here are the goods: 

But once I mixed it all up, we got this: 

I made a very brief attempt to get the Instagram-worth shot that this was inspired by but then I gave up because 1) I was hungry and didn’t feel like dicking around with this for too long 2) who cares 3) I don’t have the food Instagram skills required and 4) who cares? 

For all of the hassle this pasta and Ina Garten put me through, this was good as hell. I think the long roasting time made the tomatoes super sweet and I guess the fresh oregano worked its magic. I will say, the mozzarella isn’t super necessary but it certainly didn’t detract from anything. 

As I was putting this extremely long blog together, I was like, “Damn girl, you took a lot of pictures.” But then I was like, “Duh, because you were alone, bitch, drinking champagne and red wine all night.” It’s all true. This is my story. 

Wow. WOW. 

Guys, I know. It’s been a minute. Actually, It’s been more than a minute. What have I been doing, you may ask? Mostly I’ve been turning 30 and contemplating death. It may sound like I’m kidding but I’m not!!! (I also had a lot of work to do and frankly, I still have work to do but I’m ignoring it right now to create THIS content because you can’t have everything.) 

Yes, I am officially in my 30s and I’m dealing with it!!! I’m not one of those assholes who thinks that being 30 is old. Mainly, I was paddling through an ocean-like existential crisis as I approached this milestone birthday. For real. I spent hours laying in bed, staring at my ceiling, cycling through some combination of these thoughts: 

WHAT IS LIFE? NO REALLY? WHAT. IS. LIFE? 

WHAT IS HAPPENING?

I’M GONNA DIE.

ONE DAY I’M NOT GONNA EXIST ANYMORE!!

WHAT IS THE POINT OF ANYTHING? 

You can verify with almost every person I interacted with during this time period that these were my real, actual thoughts that I kept bringing up constantly and I bet it was pretty annoying. But then, THEN, something predictable and great happened: my birthday came and went and I calmed down…sort of. I mean, look. It happened and I can’t do anything about it, but what I can do is MAKE PASTA. Life only has the meaning that we give it and at least for now that meaning is delicious pasta. 

I purchased a mafaldine attachment for my pasta maker because nothing is real and neither is money. This pasta’s sparse wikipedia entry informed me that it is “usually served with a more delicate sauce,” so I guess that’s what the hell we’re gonna do. 

I don’t remember why shrimp scampi came to mind but I’m glad it did. Most of the shrimp scampi recipes I scrolled through were kinda meh and Olive Garden-esque (no shade, but also, like, yeah a little shade). Then I came across this: a shrimp scampi recipe from a restaurant called Scampi. It would be rather bold of them to call their restaurant “Scampi” and be throwing out subpar shrimp scampi into the world. Although the abject boldness of human beings never ceases to amaze me, I trusted that this recipe would have to be at least pretty good. 

Aren’t these noodles fun? They have the familiarity of a classic fettuccine shape but those lil ridges give it a twist that says: “Hey, this may be different but you’re gonna enjoy it.” Like a brocade tuxedo jacket. (This metaphor would work if brocade tuxedo jackets weren’t sort of tacky. Which I guess is to say that this metaphor doesn’t work.) 

The recipe calls for “shaved garlic” and I learned that I do not like shaving garlic. I also went in and added significantly more chili flakes than they called for because, wypipo. What the hell was I going to do with just ¼ TEASPOON of chili flakes??? Serve them to a newborn baby???

This is arguably one of the worst pictures, aesthetically, that I’ve posted here but I have to live in my truth. The sauce situation involves white wine, butter, lemon juice and seafood stock. 

Now that I’m an adult, I have a lot of goals for myself. I’d like to finally hang all the framed art leaning against the baseboards in almost every room of my apartment. I’d like Rihanna to look deeply into my soul and see me. However, arguably my most important adult goal is to become one of those people who makes their own stocks and broths. (The key to contentment is setting goals that you know you can achieve so you never feel like a failure. Obviously.) After all, I have that bulky-ass Instant Pot sitting on top of my fridge and maybe one day I’ll buy a bunch of mason jars and shit and make this dream happen. For now, however, I just went to the store and bought some damn seafood stock. 

Eventually it all comes together and Scampi’s shrimp scampi did not disappoint. You top all that drunk, buttery shrimp with toasted breadcrumbs and parsley and it honestly tastes like what I have to imagine is the exact flavor of the essence of “living well”. Basically, this shit was good.

So good that I didn’t even bother to take any pictures after I plated it and can  leave you only with this evidence: 

BY THE WAY, I did a fun little hack for the breadsticks you see here. I just bought some Trader Joe’s herbed pizza dough, sliced it up, twisted them and topped with butter and salt. They were not half bad and were a solid vehicle to sop up that spicy, garlicy leftover sauce. 

Are you guys ready for something? This shrimp scampi is probably one of the top three best pasta dishes I’ve made so far. I KNOW. Even typing that, it feels like a bold proclamation but I think it’s true??! I wouldn’t call this recipe difficult but it did involve a lot of finicky steps like toasting the breadcrumbs and slicing the garlic and you have to pay attention not to overcook the shrimp, but it was all worth it. 

So there you go. Does your Fancy Pasta Bitch seem different now? I’ve entered a new chapter of life and I can only hope this one is better than the last. That’s not to say that my 20s weren’t great, but if life doesn’t actively get better over the next couple of decades then, truly, what is the point? 

Still, the remnants of my existential crisis remain. After three or more glasses of wine I will again start talking about how it’s crazy that we all die and seriously, WHAT IS ALL THIS? But I’ve found some solace. I bought a book about stoicism and one of the things it talked about is the lack of permanence of absolutely everything. Everything we see and know is temporary. It’ll (hopefully!!!) take a long-ass time, but one day even something like Mount Everest will probably be gone. There are a number of schools of thought and religions that focus on this lack of permanence (shoutout to His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama). They argue that much of human suffering is the result of clinging to what is temporary. 

I think I find this comforting because even if the unknown and the utter chaos and confusion that is existing as a human persists, at least I know that everyone and everything shares this impermanence with me. It’s not, like, that comforting, but it is something. We’re all gonna die someday, guys. Let’s eat some pasta before it happens.

This past weekend was Labor Day, which means summer is on its way out suckaaaas. Technically we have until September 22nd until summer is officially, officially over but yesterday I drove by a bunch of kids going to school and I’m guessing they don’t see it that way. 

I have to admit, I’m one of those “the grass is always greener on the other side” assholes. I spent March through May complaining and waiting for the weather to warm up. This was a particularly dick-ish move because I live in Los Angeles. But I want to dine al fresco without a jacket, dammit!!! I want to swim in a pool and not worry about it getting too chilly when the sun goes down!! I suck, I know!!!

But now, of course, I am tired of summer and am deeply craving fall. In my defense, global warming is so serious it would be hilarious if it weren’t absolutely terrifying and summer has been brutal. (If you ever meet me in person, ask me to tell you about the time my power went out at 2am when it was 90 degrees outside. I briefly thought my apartment was on fire. That’s really the whole story but my IRL complaining is really something special.) All of that to say, ya girl is ready for fall. You know that “really start dressing” meme? I am that. That is me. I am already stocking up on my fall wardrobe and why yes, you CAN expect a lot of plaid from me this season. 

I am already tearing through the latest season of The Great British Baking Show on Netflix (love you forever Liam!!!!) and if that doesn’t tell you that I’m ready for some cozy shit then nothing will. I just want to watch To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before for the 32nd time and make Peter Kavinsky some sexy-ass bolognese, ya know? 

However, realistically, I still have like two more months of this on-and-off hot ass weather left to go. So while I wait, what’s better than one last ode to summer with a whole buncha basil? It is pesto time again, my pasta pals. 

There is an excellent restaurant in LA called Speranza where they serve a wonderful pesto dish that I decided to recreate. Plus, my mom and sister were in town, so I had some impressing to do. Naturally, I returned to Marcella Hazan’s infinite wisdom because has never ever failed me and has become my new standard for a trusting relationship, which probably means I will die alone under a mound of pasta. COULD BE WORSE THO. 

First we got to a-mixing the pine nuts, basil and olive oil. 

Then of course some of dat parmmmm. 

And in a twist, it is butter time. True Fancy Pasta Bitch fans, (SPEAKING OF, SHOUT OUT TO YOU, NORA FROM CHICAGO, FOR REAL FOR REAL. PLEASE FEEL BETTER AND I HOPE THIS DUMB BLOG HAS PROVIDED EVEN THE TINIEST AMOUNT OF HAPPINESS OR EVEN JUST A SMIRK. I WOULD SETTLE FOR A SKIRK). Oops ok, sorry–as I was saying, true fans will remember that Marcella adds a shit ton of butter to her pesto just the fuck because. Why wouldn’t you add three tablespoons of butter to everything you eat? Oh, because you don’t want your heart to attack you or something lame like that? 

This is some pesto-y ass pesto, people. 

For the pasta of it all, like Speranza, I went with a fettuccine–the old faithful. Speaking of faithful, you might be able to spot the one person who has my real, faithful love until the end of time peaking through the back. It is my Bad Gal Queen who guides me as I make my pasta and that’s why it tastes like eyerolls, profound indifference and wealth. 

Not to sound like an expert here, but if there’s one pasta tip I can provide it is this: water and butter. Once the pasta is cooked I tossed it in a pan with a bit of the pasta water and like another two tablespoons of butter because cholesterol was made up by the pharmaceutical companies to keep us weak. 

Finally we gotta hit ‘em like BA-BLAM: 

This is rom com pasta. It is very delicious and familiar with just enough of twist on your tongue to keep you coming back. Also it makes you believe that love is real. Maybe. As long as that love involves pasta. Without pasta, there is no love. 

This pasta journey marks the most difficult one since my potato gnocchi meltdown. My first attempt making agnolotti was a minor disaster and I briefly wondered if the pasta had finally won–if it had conquered me. But, oh dear readers oh, your Fancy Pasta Bitch is an undaunted bitch and I tried again. The spoils of my victory are oh so sweet and they come in the form of–you guessed it–pasta. 

For all my uncultured hoes out there (AKA me a few weeks ago) agnolotti are basically small, ravioli-esque stuffed pasta but more difficult because why wouldn’t they be. Relatedly, the Wikipedia page for this pasta is rude as hell. For starters, it says agnolotti are almost always stuffed with meat, which is not what another part of the internet told me to do. To be fair, my first attempt involved meat (veal and pork, to be exact) and that went poorly. I ended up just turning them into ravioli when I couldn’t get the shape right. My guests enjoyed the meal and promised me they tasted good but I was not thrilled. 

Wikipedia also notes that true agnolotti isn’t stuffed with cheese, which mine were. But it also says that a special version of agnolotti is stuffed with donkey meat and I’m sorry but fuck that. Fuck it to hell. Basically, Wikipedia says I didn’t make true agnolotti but I decide my truth and I totally did. 

For my second attempt, I went with a more modest corn and ricotta filling and I’m ashamed on many levels to say I got the recipe from THE GOOPITY GOOP GOOP DOT COM. The Goop aspect is only mildly shameful. The real tragedy here is that it was a recipe associated with noted sexual predator Mario Batali. Now, obviously I don’t feel good about this, but am I going to deprive myself of delicious pasta because an exploded Hot Pocket of a man can’t keep his hands to himself? MEN RUIN EVERYTHING BUT I WILL NOT LET HIM RUIN THIS. I made the damn pasta.

Some fresh summer corn, ricotta, pecorino and parmesan later and we’ve got this photogenic bowl of Goop. (Wowowow I truly did type that without thinking and it feels like a sign. Or maybe it’s just that Gwyneth Paltrow chose a dumb fucking word for her website.) 

I gotta say, while we’re on the subject, pecorino is an excellent and underrated cheese. Move over Ryan Seacrest because the king of cheese is PECORINO! I was a little worried the filling would be too soupy/wet but once you add the cheese and after I popped it in the fridge for a bit it was the perfect consistency. 

Of the many lessons I learned on this agnolotti journey, perhaps the most important is that this is no job for a spoon and you really do need to pipe this shit. I walked through one aisle of one grocery store looking for piping bags and then I was like, LOL WHO ARE YOU just put that shit in a plastic bag like a resourceful bitch.

The piping is important because it’s best to add the filling in a straight line and I say that with my two hours of agnolotti experience. As you can see in the above photo, I tried dotting the filling (as seen in a YouTube tutorial) and it went poorly. The straight line is where it’s at and also looks more impressive to guests and what’s the point of cooking if people can’t be impressed with you? 

AND NOW SHIT GETS COMPLICATED. You have to roll the sheet over the filing in a SNUG manner. Then there’s the PINCHING. (Is this obnoxious written enunciation helping anyone?) You’ve gotta pinch like it’s the Mad Men Era and your secretary is Joan and you have no basic decency or respect for women.

Dear lord that was a horrible metaphor, but once I started I felt I had to commit. #JusticeForJoan

The pinching thing is also a pain because you have to be very careful to seal everything tightly enough to create a pocket where nothing spills out. Keep your pockets and your circle tight, folks. Finally, it’s that vertical pinching technique that makes it possible to sort of fold the pasta over when you’re cutting it, creating the adorable agnolotti shape. 

Behold: 

ALRIGHT CAN I TALK MY SHIT FOR A MINUTE? I was very goddamn proud of myself when I finally made these successfully. This was probably the most difficult pasta I’ve made so far, yet here they are. I believe it was Truman Capote who said: “Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.” Obviously he was talking about me, the Fancy Pasta Bitch, otherwise why would he have used a food metaphor????

The sauce was simple–just some pasta wate, butter and basil. I ended up using the rest of the remaining truffle butter in my fridge because, as you already know, I am a proud truffle ho.  

Like a complete idiot, I made this dish for a friend who can’t eat corn and another who doesn’t eat gluten, so I ended up eating most of this myself and I’m not saying I did that on purpose, but I am saying sometimes my unconscious inconsiderateness for the dietary restrictions of my guests works in my favor. 

BAM. 

They’re a little on the large side, but small pasta is for small people and I have the spirit of a giant. The corn is bright and sweet and gets along very well with the basil. If I make this again I might add a little extra summin summin to cut the sweetness a tad but this shit was good, yo. 

Also, keeping with the theme of summer freshness, the agnolotti was accompanied by an extremely summery salad of peaches, tomatoes, prosciutto, basil, burrata and some sea salt so flaky it’s that girl you met at your first Los Angeles workout class who you totally need to get drinks with soon. 

I know this blog isn’t called Fancy Salad Bitch, but you’re getting this content, dammit. That said, I probably shouldn’t end my pasta blog with a picture of not pasta so here’s a closeup of an agnolotto. 

Let us all enjoy the lazy, delicious spirit of summer because even though I’ve been complaining about the heat for weeks, I’m going to miss summer during the frigid, 69 degree Los Angeles winter. (A friend recently told me that I have the best worst personality and I believe this is an excellent example of just that.) 

I’m going to tell a story that is only going to be sort of accurate but the gist of it is what matters and this is a pasta blog not a fact finding mission so who cares?

At some point in the days of youth, my family had visitors in town. (I think.) We took them on a ferry to some island that I can’t remember. On that island we did some stuff and I do remember learning about the Indian tribe that was native to the island. (Sorry can’t remember that either. I should do sudoku) I remember a very cool totem pole and some rocks and stuff. However, the most impactful part of the trip was a snack we were either given or purchased. (I feel confident in saying we definitely didn’t steal it.) it was a cup of clams in some sort of unbelievably delicious broth.  (HEY MOM, DAD IF YOU’RE READING THIS PLEASE ADVISE.) 

As is the theme of this entire trip down memory lane, I cannot remember if I had had clams up until that point, but either way, it was life changing. I very much enjoyed those clams, is what I’m saying. The only thing I miss about New England is the possibility of an impromptu clam bake–even though I never experienced a single clam bake the entire time I lived in Boston, which is a sham and a tragedy and I definitely thought I had enough white friends to make that happen. 

Even without the clam bake experience, I’ve learned to love those steaming vessels of briny sexiness. Best of all, there’s almost nothing on this entire godforsaken planet better than sopping up all the leftover white wine and butter and garlic with a loaf of white bread and HOLY MOLY THAT IS GOOD LIVING. 

In case I haven’t been completely clear, the point of this story is that I like clams a lot. A lot a lot. I am also the proud owner of a linguine pasta attachment and I think we all know where this is going.  

I went with Bon Appétit’s “Best Linguine and Clams” because it says best. Also, I’m not gonna lie, the picture on their website is very convincing and as you will later see, I tried to emulate their shot but lighting is hard.

Like seemingly everything these days, this recipe was a lot more tiresome than I thought it was going to be. Some of it isn’t their fault–you have to thoroughly clean clams no matter what. (Did I get all of the grit off my clams? No I did not. But I’m only perfect on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.)

HOWEVER, some of it totally was Bon Appétit’s fault because they had me out here MAKING MY OWN BREADCRUMBS. The next time I make this I’m obviously just going to be buy breadcrumbs because do I at all strike you as the type of person who makes their own breadcrumbs? (”Well, Kara,” you say, “you do extensively blog about your adventures making pasta from scratch and–” oops sorry I smacked you.) 

Luckily, once you get beyond those hurdles it’s pretty smooth sailing. The one hiccup is that the recipe instructs you to toss your pasta in the clam juice sauce situation until it’s “glossy.” I mean, I don’t know. Does this look glossy to you?  

The best part of this dish is the presentation. Plopping down this pot of NOODLES AND GARLIC AND BUTTER AND CLAMS AND WHITE WHITE AND JOY in front of guests. But I could also see myself cozying up and eating out of this giant pot of food all by myself. The world is dark, y’all. Gotta have some levity and uncomfortable overeating every once in awhile. 

As I said, I was really drawn in by Bon Appétit’s photo situation. Look at this shit!

Find me a human being with a shred of basic decency and working taste buds who wouldn’t want to burry their head into that pot like some sort of a Italian ostrich. This was my attempt

I don’t usually do a lot of photo editing on my Fancy Pasta Bitch pictures because I’ve already told you what’s up, but made an exception here. I dunno if it made much of a difference. 

Fuck a photo anyway because the food was delicious, which is the only point that matters. This was accompanied by a big loaf of bred and lots of white wine. If a man isn’t able to make me as happy as this meal made me then LOL @ MARRIAGE. 

I think next time I’ll add a little bit more anchovy because those two delicious beasts of the sea deserve to swim together…in my mouth. Otherwise this recipe was goddamn perfect, guys. 

Linguine feels like sort of an underrated pasta. Its easily substituted for spaghetti a lot of times and it’s not as flashy as say, your bigoli. But this dish made me realize that I’ve got to start doing more with linguine. A shrimp scampi perhaps??!!! That definitely feels like something that’s got to go down in the near future. But let me not think of shrimps while I’ve still got clams on the brain. They deserve their time to shine. 

GOD I LOVE CLAMS. 

lol!

Photos by Ethan Gulley

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