On with the supermarket list. One aisle has almost a full side devoted to pasta. But there were yawning gaps there. In one gap was a broken box of Barilla macaroni. The other macaronis of all kinds were gone and all the spaghettis were taken too. The same had been true of two other supermarkets visited just before lockdown. I am guessing that there are many spag bols and mac ’n cheeses going down with Netflix.

All the other frilly, curly, shelly, ricey, dandy pastas were on the shelves, forlorn and unwanted. And no one’s making lasagna, I noted, the big pasta sheets also boxed, waiting for their people to take them home.

Lasagne’s pretty good lockdown food, lasting deliciously well after production. Everyone’s making bread, I see on Facebook, confirmed by the lack of yeast available. Now if they’re doing something as involving like that, lasagne could be just the trick.

It was why I chose it as my first real dish to make in my first real, if tiny, flat in varsity days. I reckoned my chances of getting a seemingly complicated dish reasonably right were better than doing something supposedly simple, like grilling a steak. Valerie, my flatmate, had declared her sole dish, and so her signature dish, was banana custard. Er, custard on custard? No, that hadn’t occurred to me then. The lasagne recipe in Over 21, my mag of the time, was from the Emilia Romagna area of Italy, one of the three lasagne regions.

I was astonished by my own creation that evening of our flat-warming dinner for a few friends. It was the tastes of the nutmeg and egg custard trining with the spinach that wowed me particularly. The bolognaise ragu and the rest I’m sure were just okay. That’s how I know it can taste even better the next day, warmed or straight from the fridge. 

You could just make the lasagne pieces nutmeggy, eggy pie part instead of the ragu business, providing your place has eggs, lucky you. You use up new or broken bits of lasagne sheets or even other pasta bits. Break up some spinach into a frying pan that will also be the final pie pan. So it needs to be able to go under the grill. Add a flurry of nutmeg, salt and either black or white pepper, some butter if you like. Maybe even soften some onion and garlic in there, up to you. Add a bit of water to the spinach, not even enough to cover, and the broken lasagna sheets, whatever colour they are. They will now go greenish anyway. The water will evaporate and also semi-cook the sheets for 5 or so minutes. Then make sure the pan is not watery for the next creamy stage. It can be buttery but not watery. Mix a couple of eggs and a bit of Ideal milk or cream if you have it. If not, just add a very little bit of fuller cream milk. Add those to the pan containing the spinach and the half-cooked pasta bits, along with any ricotta (fat chance I know) or drained cottage cheese. Or/and any leftover bits of cheeses that do not leech oil, so not Cheddar or Gouda cheeses, but could be mozzarella or many others. If you have ends of yellow cheeses (generally the oily ones), save those for the top. Mix the creamy mixture over low heat for two or three minutes, so that it is still a bit creamy and hasn’t become a hard omelette or scrambled eggs. If it has, be grateful and eat it, but we have further plans here. Try to pull the lasagne sheets to the top of the mixture in the pan and grate over any of those yellow cheeses mentioned. Put the pan under the grill so that the top crisps into a crust over what should still be a fairly creamy and nutmeggy “filling”.

There’s no reason why you can’t make the “pie” with golden gem squash innards instead of green spinach. It also tastes marvellous with nutmeg.

Image of multicoloured conchiglie pasta by Bruno /Germany from Pixabay

What about those left-behind, shell-shaped pastas? Conchiglie and their smaller and bigger versions are a relatively new thing in Italy, developed during the machine-pasta times, favoured in the south for festive days and parties. Southern festive dishes often mean broccoli as an ingredient. And thickish sauces to seep into the pasta hollows.

My sister’s 21st birthday party had among the buffet dishes a tuna and seafood pasta dish that impressed me, especially because there was no ubiquitous cheese with it, unusual at the time. I tried to recreate it at my place with instant sorts of foods, like canned tuna, a tin of clams or oysters or mussels and I thought the marine-type pasta shells were appropriate. Besides my music publishing and promotion work I did some make-up and clothing modelling. I worked out that the only way I could stay as thin as the other models was if I didn’t eat at all for six days of the week. On Sundays, I’d eat that tuna pasta as my favourite weekly meal option. It was the only day I didn’t feel like falling over.

I still think there’s something in this, to utilise shell-shaped pasta, maybe a combination of the southern festive broccoli with tinned, lockdown tuna. A tin of clams could contribute a different texture in a garlicky wine reduction for some sophistication. To a little olive oil in a pan big enough to hold all the pasta eventually, soften a few cloves of crushed garlic, and a green chopped chilli, with some salt and black pepper. Add less than a cup of white wine and let that reduce until it seems substantial rather than thin, maybe by a half of the original amount. If there’s no white wine to be had, use fish stock or even veg stock with a bit of some spirits, like gin, cane or vodka, even brandy or sherry if necessary. To this reduction, add tinned tuna, drained but not wrung dry, and stir-shred the tuna with a wooden spoon in the wine mix. Taste for seasoning and you might even add tinned clams if you like, fairly well drained. And take off the heat. The pasta shells should cook for a third of their given cooking time in their salted water before you add quite a lot of broccoli florets for another third of the time, the pasta by then having cooked for two thirds of its time. Retain about a third of a cup of the pasta water when draining. Add that and the pasta and broccoli to the tuna pan and warm through well, till the pasta is properly cooked for that last third of its time. Scatter some bright parsley over the lot.

Image of farfalle and lasagne by Elias Sch. from Pixabay

The bow-tied farfalle or butterflies seem dressed up with nowhere to go, so let’s put them to use. Some new year’s eves ago, I was making, among other things, “something by Antonio Carluccio” as briefed, for a party. I agreed to the catering and party attendance on condition that I’d leave well before any tolling in of that new year. The Carluccio thing I made in situ was a huge dish of farfalle featuring little ties, little meatballs in a creamy red pepper sauce and peas. While the guests were still toying with cheeses and dessert, I packed up to go. I couldn’t find the host and neither could I get out of the house, which exit or entrance was through a large garage. I watched the clock as the hands moved closer to 12, tugging hopelessly at the door. When the host emerged looking oddly deranged without his glasses, his silk party shirt sporting new Fortuny creases and not successfully tucked in at the back, his hair standing up horror-movie style, he apologised for having been being out “for a moment” because he was “just seeing Julia off”.

When I look at the pasta bow ties they remind me somehow of that host’s midnight party ensemble.

Farfalle are one of the oldest pastas, from the 1500s in Lombardy, a pinched-together version of straccetti, usually made with semolina and egg added to the flour. It’s tempting to use the farfalle in some lockdown celebration manner. So do some roasted red peppers, as we spoke of and some roasted garlic cloves and pulse or mix them, not puree them, with a can of tomatoes, a red chilli, some herbs like slightly toasted rosemary and lots of back pepper, in a bowl. Cook the farfalle in salted water till done and dry them on a towel. Then fry them for 2 minutes each side in oil. They’ll be crisped. Dust them with a little coarse salt while fresh from the fryer or dust with any ersatz Parmesan or even with red paprika. Dip the natty bow tie crisps in the scarlet mixture for cheer and as a quite satisfying “party” snack.

None of the ideas above are strictly anything like Italian, just lockdownish and adventurous. In Bologna there is no spaghetti with bolognese ragu anyway. It’s served with ribbons of egg tagliatelle or pappardelle (or in the lasagne). Those ribbons are all still waiting there on the supermarket shelf too. 

But we just want ways of using what we happen to have with what’s left of the pastas.

Image of orecchiette pasta by pixel1 from Pixabay

So don’t ignore the frilly pastas that can be autumnally cute cooked with April mushrooms in butter, with just their own seasoned juices and oregano. The curly ones are ideal for supermarket-bought pesto. The rosmarino pasta that looks like rice is fun served with a pale lockdown stew. I like the clattering sound that orecchiette, or ears, make when poured into water and use them whenever I can find them, like now. All the pastas love garlic and olive oil and that can simply be that. Still, there’s nothing wrong with simply cooking up cherry tomatoes, skins and all, with balsamic vinegar till they collapse and ooze juices, which is when you introduce any old cooked pasta with a bit of the cooking water and let it all cook through. 

There’s much more to the pasta supermarket than spaghetti and macaroni. All the more for masked us to make off with, to our lockdown kitchens. DM