On Becoming a Qualified Pasta Maker of Inestimable Memory

A successful dish requires unwavering emotional and financial investment. Hence, mermaids, extra virgins, and so on.”

A characteristic lack of self-preservation sent me halfway across the globe with a cabal of women who do not move gently through this world. But I learned to cook something along the way.

I began to come to my senses in the 100th hour of a flight from Seattle to someplace in Europe they call Italy.

What in the name of all that is holy was I doing here, so far away from my secret KP compound, craftily disguised with blue tarps, and my extensive private liquor collection?

It was the Elegant Ladies of the Key Peninsula.

They are artists, entrepreneurs, and fundraisers of the first order, and whether you know it or not, they are among those ennobling ministers of grace who defend the tranquil lifestyle the rest of us take for granted.

They must’ve got their claws into me at one such fund-raising event, when my guard was down and my glass empty, and the next thing I knew I was the fifth wheel on a type of “drink the wine where it’s grown while painting landscapes you will own” experience within the confines of a ruined palace built by some malfeasant prince quite rightly decapitated during the Renaissance. At the same time, local artisans were meant to come educate, illuminate, and, I hoped, do some other things to us.

Instead, it hailed for five days. This meteorological assault drove water through the ceiling into my bed, suitcase, and cocktails. Olive trees planted by Roman senators during the first republic collapsed from the weight of the rain, ripping up ancient plumbing and tearing substandard wiring from the weeping walls of our alleged castle, leaving us in a state of medieval misery without working lights or flushing toilets. If I believed the deteriorating causeway leading away from this ghastly hilltop gulag could support our rented Fiat, I would’ve abandoned the Elegant Ladies without a backward glance to claim sanctuary at a roulette wheel in Monaco.

The agony of our confinement was made immeasurably more severe by the presence of a remarkably despicable person, a supposed nonna whom I called the Old Hag, and who inexplicably braved the storm each day (perhaps because it was of her own conjuring) to appear in our kitchen to steal whatever comestible she could not ruin with her larcenous yet incompetent mitts.

In addition to her daily wage, which she had already received in a hefty cash deposit, she demanded money for any action, movement, or indeed utterance that did not immediately benefit her vile and undeserving self. Is there coffee? Sì: Dieci euro. Where is the toilet paper in this disgusting palace? Ce l’ho qui. Dieci euro. Will you share your hideous homemade grappa with us poor sinners? Certo, piacere: Cinquanta euro.

As my Elegant Lady counterparts wilted under barometric and other pressures, the Old Hag increased her rapacious grasp and, in my absence (when I hiked down the hill to a gas station to buy grappa for my own use), she cast a spell over my companions that somehow convinced them to hire her daughter-in-law’s daughter to come teach us how to make ravioli.

To say that I was incensed is to offend both the word and the emotion commonly attached to it.

While the Elegant Ladies bent over their easels by candlelight, dabbing at representations of some disarticulated olive branch as the concubines of our decapitated prince must once have done, I finally exploded at the galling injustice of our condition.

“You nightmares from hell!” I roared, fueled by gas station grappa (though in truth I employed less poetic language).

“I have sailed across the Pacific! I have been stabbed in a bar fight! I have shot men in anger — men to whom I was not even married! And now, you want me to give this, this, this — abomination — more money? For pasta lessons?”

But it was all for nothing. The Elegant Ladies, in their superior numbers, experience, and judgment, overruled my ignoble protests. Thus defeated, the spectacular existential chaos of my life was laid bare, and I was undone.

There’s something about grappa that makes everyone talk like that.

And so it came to pass, in the afternoon of the fifth day, that an entirely surprising young woman emerged from between the sheets of rain undermining our fortifications, and into our kitchen. Speaking in a dialect indecipherable even to the polyglots among us, she demurely revealed herself from beneath soaking outer layers while apologizing, or so we believed, for her unfortunate connection to the Old Hag, and explaining a just and true intent to transform each one of our quaking souls into qualified ravioli makers of inestimable memory.

Who knows what she actually said, but it required just as many syllables, and summoned a pious aura far greater than the festering squalor of our decapitated prince’s palace deserved.

She looked at me for some reason, perhaps because by then I was drinking straight from my personal pint bottle of grappa. Her gaze was so enchanting that it made me wish I had a son to introduce to her. Instead, I poured her a shot. She lifted one eyebrow, and then her glass, and we were off.

Ravioli

Ingredients

2 cups 00 flour, plus extra for dusting. If you happen to be ordering this from Europe or some woke hippie farm in the Midwest, get doppio zero or tipo 00. It’s milled much finer than our Yankee all-purpose flour, and it has a lower protein and gluten content, so it won’t tear when you roll it thin, and supposedly won’t tear up your guts either. My celiac friends claim Old World wheat doesn’t make them sick, but your body, your choice.

3 large eggs from the most privileged, gluttonous, and laziest hens you can find. This is not for show. A big fat chicken that eats a rich diet produces a richer yolk, giving pasta a deep flavor and color because of greater fat content.

1 teaspoon of obscenely expensive salt from the briniest sea within reach, preferably one brimming with mermaids, sea horses, and such. In other words: mythologically epic salt.

1 and more tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, the best you can afford, delivered by any extra virgins you may have lazing about. That oil will provide elasticity to the dough and will prevent it from oxidizing while it rests. A successful dish requires unwavering emotional and financial investment. Hence, mermaids, extra virgins, and so on.

Sauce and filling (see below).

Procedure

1. Make a flour and salt volcano on your counter with a crater at the center. I don’t know how Europe figured this out, maybe they have more volcanoes than I realized, but this is the only way. I’ve done it by machine, and this works way better because it prevents overmixing and you get all involved with your ingredients, as you will soon appreciate.

2. Crack the eggs into the crater and add a shot of that very good olive oil. Use a fork to gently mix it all together.

3. Work the flour into the crater and knead until it feels right, say 10 minutes. That means the dough will be smooth, not sticky, kind of like Play-Doh. Add a bit of flour or water as needed to get the consistency right, but not much of either.

4. Shape the dough into a ball, wrap it in plastic, and rest at room temperature for half an hour to let the gluten relax. You might as well, too. Got grappa?

5. Cut the dough and shape it into long, slender bars, then roll them out flat. That young maestra I was drinking with could roll dough thinner than a butterfly’s wing. I can’t, so I run it through the pasta attachment on my industrial-strength mixer into long sort-of rectangles, and that’s what you should do, if you’ve got one. It should be about 1 millimeter thick. Can you do that with a rolling pin?

6. Add a bit of filling at the end of a dough strip, cut it about an inch or so upstream, moisten the edges with a dab of water, and fold it over, pushing out any trapped air. Keep doing that until there’s no more dough. Put it all on one or more baking sheets with a bit of flour and freeze for half an hour. They didn’t do this during the Renaissance (ravioli predates that epoch by a century), but it will stabilize the structure before cooking, and do you really want to ignore any opportunity for stability nowadays?

6A. About that ravioli filling. Since we’re doing pasta here, let’s make the filling as simple as possible. Buy a tub of ricotta, or any other creamy, cheesy thing you like. Maybe add a piece of anchovy or smoked salmon, or some baked garlic. Scoop and apply as needed. That’s it. You can mess with this part more later.

7. Don’t just boil these precious gems you have so labored to create and hope for the best. I assume you’ve already made a nice sauce by this time that is simmering away on the stove. If not, melt some onions and garlic in unsalted butter, then add that expensive salt and a healthy dose of grated carrot if one is handy. Chop up some tomatoes and soak them in water for a while (our maestra did this; remember her?), give them a squeeze to get rid of the seeds, and add them to the pan. Cook it all down for a bit, maybe add some tasty broth if it looks dry, or a slug of whatever wine is open. Add ravioli for about five minutes. Serve immediately. You can add Parm when you serve, but if you’ve done it right, you won’t need to.

Obtain a printable version of this month's KP Cooks here.