Pasta from Scotch (for you srdj)

 I booked into a pasta making course and am now obsessed with the idea of whipping up fresh pasta after work.

'Sarah' met our group of wannabe pasta pros at the station in Frascati - I say 'Sarah' because honestly, I didn't catch her name and I think she said Sarah - apologies if that's not correct. The group were 14, a young English couple also staying in Frascati, and the rest were from the USA, amongst them a set of grandparents, their son and his wife, and their grandaughter.

We walked back up to the town and Sarah talked about the cattedrale which featured in my blog yesterday - what I hadn't mentioned was the crowd of tv cameras and army uniforms on the steps of the church as I came down from being up in the hills. I did mention though that the church was bombed - turns out that as we stood with the army crowds it was 90 years to the day of the WWII bombing of the town. Sarah talked about the Villas that I mentioned visiting, both of which were  requisitioned for the soldiers' accommodation.

Then we wandered up (see, lots of up in this town!) to her parent's shop where the hard work would start. She kept laughing and saying that we would no longer need to go the gym if we made pasta. Her family have owned land and made wine in Frascati since the 1600s and she has returned from life in Rome to help them.

We all sat around a huge table and I got to sit next to the grandfather from the USA. "That's my grandaughter" he said. "I've only got one, my brother has 12".  Oh, ok..

"I've served in Korea and Afghanistan." Then he said in a loud voice "my daughter in law has just got her doctorate". Oh I said,, well done,  in what? " She's a pharmacist, she works really long hours". Oh well done (smile at her, she's smiling at me).  These conversations are The Best.

Two beautiful fine wine glasses at each setting on the table, cheese, salami and mortadella to taste with the wine. Very good wine which you could buy for 15 euro a bottle. And so they did, immediately.

We added the egg to the flour and started working - rolling and punching down, folding and punching down until it was smooth, and then rolled it with the rolling pin until it was thin enough to see our fingers through it - cut it into the various thicknesses and stood back looking pretty damn proud. My neighbour was struggling a bit (so much easier to do this standing I suggested to him) and he was chatting about his wonderful wife 'she can cook anything, she can sew anything.. ' (wife is smiling at me now). I asked if he'll be making pasta for everyone at home now "no, just not interested, never cooked, don't know how..'.

Anyway. Sarah talked again about WWII and explained that beneath the houses through the town were connecting tunnels (now closed over so that you could only access the space beneath your own house, and down we went - these tunnels were originally used for wine making because of the perfect 10 degree temperature, but were used as bomb shelters during the war, and for hiding people. Pretty thought provoking.

Back upstairs the pasta was boiling and we had a choice of sauce to add - ordered another glass of wine and sat back to enjoy it. I made the carbonara, rich with an egg, a bit of truffle oil and pieces of guanciale (smoky meat)  plenty of pecorino and parmesan, and a generous amount of black pepper. 

At one point one of the USA women looked at me across the table and asked where I was from (she was from Baltimore) and then exclaimed 'oh you are travelling by yourself, aren't you scared? you are sooo brave, I want your life..'. 

Truly a fabulous evening! The Americans all had to cinderella it to get the last train back to Rome, and I sat in my hotel room with a stomach too full to think about sleeping, knowing that I had to be on the 6:30 train in the morning. - advantage of being in the hotel opposite the train station, not far to go to get there.