Italian food, pasta, fast food, in Latham. Pasta carbonara, aglio oglio, lasagna. All the best pastas on threepastas.com. Other options in the Galleria7Market can be found on https://galleria7market.com.
Here is some info on pasta… wheat has been harvested by humans for many years and is often associated with bread (exactly when durum wheat was first harvested is unknown). Bread can be rushed a ready to cook in an hour or three, but the loses quality if it is not given a longer rise time. Picky eaters in ancient times were a problem because pasta hadn’t been invented yet and bread makers were often behind, making rushed low quality bread.
At some point someone took their wheat, kneaded it. They wanted to skip the rise time altogether so they rolled it out very thin and dropped it in some boiling water, they were in such a rush they invented pasta. The first pasta was likely a very soft noodle, a crap bread will have low enough hydration that it can be made into wet and soft pasta. When the good bread makers saw these noodles around town, they wanted a strand of the pasta action. They figured a firm noodle would make their pasta dishes better, so they used low hydration and some drying time to make better pastas than the shitty bread makers would ever make.
The first good pasta was simply salted and eaten once cooked, soon to arrive was olive oil, and then butter once people with cows got involved. Pasta additions ballooned from there as the cheesemongers saw great potential in pasta. Parmesan and romano were combined with butter or eggs to make some of the best pasta ever made. The best fettucine alfredo in the region was then made by Friar Alfredo himself. Alfredo knew where the best cheese and butter were, and he knew a good breadmaker as well. He brought the cheese and butter and made the special request for the new pasta product to be rolled. Once the pasta was cooked alfredo added his parmesan and butter, he fucked it up bad and could barely eat it, the cheese he aged 8 months had curdled, and the butter went into the garbage with it. He was so sad. But he practiced heating his cheese and butter, and the next time he added them to the pasta, his fettucine alfredo brought the house down.
A wealthy trader wandered the street looking for some local food he’d never sampled. He saw a friar with a bowl on the side of the road and was about to cross the street when he saw a few silky noodles fall off the friars spoon, with every desperate attempt he planned his confession of gluttony. The trader scooted over for a closer look and the friar snapped, “be gone ye covetous money grubber, no pasta for you.” But the trader had all he needed, he asked around about pasta and acquired some from the best baker he knew, they baker noted he’d heard of a new cheesy pasta that was out of this world, and the trader figured that must have been that nice silky pasta the friar had. He took his pasta to the best cheesemonger he knew, Mr. Parmesan Reggiano (he didn’t know Mr. Locatelli) and was happy with the result, but could not understand why the friar was so willing to commit gluttony for a spoonful of noodles. He took his leftovers home since the cheesemonger was already made that his cheese had been diluted with wheat product. The trader decided he needed some spice in his life and took some of the black pepper he had bought in bulk and hadn’t portioned out yet, cracked it under his pan and exclaimed, cacio e pepe! he was so happy with his new dish he let out a loud yelp.
Marco Polo came bursting through the door, snatched bit of the pasta with cheese and cracked pepper, and ran through the street shouting, “look what I found, look what I found!” As Marco Polo ran down the street like a thieving fool, the best cook around whipped up some pasta and added the garlic and oil he had prepared for the night, and he had a wonderful aglio oglio, the best aglio oglio in the capital region, or maybe it was aglio oglio e pepperoncini, either way it was good. Mr. Locatelli was having dinner the next night at the local restaurant and saw plate after plate of silky pasta with chunks of black pepper, “can’t they grind the pepper?” he thought.
Mr. Locatelli had his own top ranked cheese company, and he though he would be furious if someone overpowered his cheese witih big cracked pepper, but he loved the pasta idea. Locatelli made some pasta at home using the same intuition that led him to produce the best cheese in the world. He added an amount of Locatelli only its founder can afford, and mixed it with and egg to get some more protein and bacon or guanciale as well so he wouldn’t need to prepare another course for dinner. The carbonara he made was of the finest quality, as he used his own cheese and ground the pepper like you’re supposed to. His pasta, or fettucine carbonara spread household to household, and everyone in the capital region would be having restaurant carbonara only to compare to their own homemade version, made the night they learned how.
Pasta would later be combined with ragu, tomato sauce, and basil among other things, but that’s a story for another day. I probably covered too much in the this blog already, and will need to readdress the development of simple sauces, where the starring role is played by cheese or garlic.