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By Kieran Weigal“Keep it simple!” Paolo told Will Randolph and me on our trip to Naples, Italy. We took a cooking course with Paulo, a Naples local who
invited us into his home to share some of his experience and clear up some cooking
misconceptions that many people have about Italian food.
According to Paulo, spaghetti and
meatballs are not widely consumed by Italians, and he had never even heard of chicken
parmesan, which surprised us to say the least. The one thing however that stuck with me was
his explanation of what true “Italian cooking is”–“Everybody thinks Italians have the best food because they use expensive ingredients and hand make everything from scratch, including their pasta. But that’s not how a local would cook. We use the same boxes of Barilla pasta and
simple local ingredients to make food.”
Simplicity over complexity.
He showed us how to make a Neapolitan favorite: potato pasta, a dish we were quite skeptical of when he first mentioned it. “It’s pasta with potato sauce,” he explained, and despite our skepticism, we had to find out what this dish was really about.
What resulted was exactly what he had described: pasta with a potato sauce. What surprised
me was that it was so simple yet tasty. Was it going to earn a Michelin star? No. But
that’s not what the dish or local Italian cooking is about. Remember, simplicity over complexity.
When cooking along with Paulo, we asked him to be more detailed in how much of which
ingredient he was putting in or for how long he was cooking things. He always responded: "It's potato pasta, you can’t really mess it up.”
And attempting to recreate the dish back home in Kentucky with the scattered instructions we had hastily written down was a daunting task. But I can say Paulo was right. It is, in fact, potato pasta, and it is hard to mess it up. There is a lot of eyeballing and guesstimating, but that just adds to the no-frills flare of the dish.
By the time we sat down with Paulo, we had prepared dinner and made friends, shared life stories,
and bonded. We felt at home in a place that was filled with strangers just a few hours
earlier.
Preparing food is not only about the end product but also the journey to get there. The
simple attitude toward preparing food reflects the Italian art of enjoying life. Just use simple
and fresh ingredients, enjoy their different flavors in varying ratios, as well as each other's
company and life becomes pretty hard to mess up.
Just like this memorable dish.
Potato Pasta Alla Paolo
- 1.5kg potatoes
- ½ cup olive oil
- ½ cup diced onion
- Bacon or similar pork
- A handful of cherry tomatoes
- Chopped rind of parmesan
- Box of pasta (Paulo used mixed pasta which was a mix of spaghetti, penne, rigatoni and other similar pasta, but any pasta works)
- Salt and Pepper
- Peel 1.5kg of potatoes and dice. Place in a strainer and place strainer in a pot of hot water.
- Place ½ cup of olive oil and ½ cup diced onion in another pot. Add bacon or similar pork to the pot and cook over low to medium heat. Add cherry tomatoes after a few minutes.
- Once the onions and tomatoes are soft add the potatoes from the strainer into the potwith the onions and pork along with some chopped rinds of parmesan.
- Once the potatoes are semi-cooked add water to the pot until the water is just coveringthe tops of the potatoes.
- Once the water boils add salt and pasta. Stir very well while adding water until the water is just covering the new mix. This step requires frequent stirring to prevent the potatoes and pasta from burning to the bottom of the pot as well as encouraging the potatoes to break up and turn into a creamy sauce. Add more hot water to make the sauce creamier or add more cold water to maintain the shape of the potatoes depending on preference.
- Once the pasta is almost cooked add a generous amount of salt.
- Serve in a bowl with provolone, black pepper, olive oil, and parmesan.
Kieran Weigal, of Louisville, Ky., is a member of the McConnell Scholar Class of 2022. He studies computer engineering and political science at the University of Louisville.