Hello and welcome to our weekly cooking event where Noémie, Yegor, Lynn and Moritz from MC will all cook a dish from a certain category.
Todays topic will be pasta.
Arguably the most cooked dish or type of dish all over the world. A staple, if not the sole category of student cooking or cooking on a budget.
The basis for the most beloved dishes in the world and constant that can be found in most traditional styles of cooking all over the world. Of course we have to be talking about pasta, or rather noodles in general and not just pasta (the exclusively Italian type of noodle made out of wheat, water and eggs, most of the time).
People have been eating strings of dough all over the world for more than 2000 years, at least the first uses of something that could be described as noodles can be credited to China somewhere between 25 until 220 CE. Pasta must be the best thing out of China after the concept of writing on paper and myself.
But I digress.
Eating dough in strings has to be universal because everywhere around the world there are cultures that eat theire dough like this for the last 2000 years, until we arrive in Italy, where much of our relation to noodles comes from.
It is said that first accounts of something pasta like are actually fried sheets of dough that resemble Lasagna much more than pasta. How fitting then that Moritz will be doing a vegetarian lasagna. Probably not as traditional as the first uses of pasta in Italy but surely just as delicious!
Continuing the legacy of Italian Lasagna, Lynn will be making a „Nudelauflauf“. Something that I could only describe as the German-ish Frankenstein Version of Lasagna. A spin on the idea of pasta backed in the oven with sauce and cheese.
Nudelauflauf literally meaning Pasta accumulation, although the translation of pasta casserole is probably much more accurate.
Noémie will be making a garlic shrimp dish with spaghetti. A combination that has to be as timeless as the idea of pasta itself. Since garlic and shrimp go as well together as… lets see… well pasta and sauce.
When I first visited a supermarket back in Germany, right after the Quarantine started, there where two things completely missing from the shelves. Toilet paper and dried Italian pasta.
It seems to me that the people where scared and bought the most familiar and safe thing they could find. Something that accompanied not only them but also our ancestors through the latter half of this millennium at least. So they bought pasta.
The Chinese have noodles out of rice and wheat, the germans have Spätzle, the Italians have pasta and the vegans have Zuchini strings.
Pasta is a testament that good food will always be good, regardless of where it comes from.
Regardless of how long you cook it for as long as you do it with love. – As cliché as it sounds.
Enjoy the recipes and talk to you next week.
Your Litija Team
Here are the links for the pasta recipes:
