I'm hishikata mitsuho. For 38 years and 4 months, I had never boiled pasta.
Now I like pasta enough to have built a whole website about it. That doesn't mean I started out as a good cook. Quite the opposite.
It started with wanting to cook for my child.
I wanted to learn to make something good for my child. I also wanted to lose some weight and spend a little less on food. Those everyday reasons got me thinking about cooking at home.
Pasta seemed like an easy place to start. Boil it, toss it with something—how hard could it be? That was about the extent of my thinking.
I once boiled capellini for about ten minutes.
I didn't even know pasta came in different thicknesses. I picked up some capellini and gave it a good ten minutes in the pot. Today I'd say, “That's far too long!” Back then, it all looked like the same pasta to me.
I didn't know you were supposed to salt the cooking water, either. Yes, probably something I should have known. But that really was my starting point.
Better than I expected. Deeper than I imagined.
Even so, what I cooked tasted better than I had expected. Realizing I could make something that good myself made me want to try another dish, then another. My little repertoire slowly grew.
I began noticing how much the same dish could change with a different pasta thickness, ingredient or technique. What had looked so simple turned out to have endless things to explore. Somewhere along the way, I got completely hooked.
A place to enjoy choosing tonight's pasta.
PASTAFONIA grew out of following that interest. It's become somewhere I actually use to choose dinner: look at what's in the fridge, browse a few possibilities, and think, “That's what I'll make tonight.”
If someone who boiled capellini for ten minutes can find this much enjoyment in cooking, there's plenty of room to begin. I'll keep cooking, using the site, and making little improvements as I go.
I'd love to hear what you think, or what you wish it could do. If it makes choosing dinner a little more enjoyable for someone else, I'll be happy.