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By PHOODIE

I have honestly never met a person who doesn’t like pasta. I know of people who find it ‘heavy’ or who have Coeliac disease so generally avoid it (unless it’s a GF variety), but I don’t know of anyone who does not like the taste. I guess the reason is that pasta comes in so many different forms. From glass noodles to lasagna sheets, there is something for everyone. Also, when eaten alone, it has a pretty basic flavour, so unlike anchovies, for example, it’s a hard one to absolutely detest.

OK, so I am about to get a bit weird, but bear with me! I promise what I’m going to say actually does make sense!

I don’t normally liken food to clothing, in fact I have never done so before, but out of nowhere, when I sat down to write this post, I started thinking about how pasta was like denim. Yep, denim. As in jeans. Weird hey?! Anyway, let me tell you why:

Pasta can be really cheap or super expensive, as can jeans. You can bling both right up or bring them both back to basics. You can make a pasta dish at home for a couple of bucks or you can go to a fancy restaurant for a forty dollar bowl. Likewise, Kmart sells jeans for $9 and a boutique in London that I visited with a friend once (visited, did not purchase from!) had a 400 POUND pair.

You can eat pasta, and likewise, wear jeans, all year round. In summer I enjoy pasta salads or pasta with tomato and oil, and in winter my favourite pasta dish is one with a lamb ragu sauce.

And with jeans, in summer, cut-offs and three-quarter lengths are everywhere you look. In winter, it’s boyfriend, bootleg and skinny with knee highs over the on top. Pasta (and denim) comes is a bunch or different sizes, shapes and colours and is eaten (or in the case of jeans, worn) all over the world. International is the middle name of both.

Pasta is the quick, easy solution for those nights when you want something yummy and filling but you don’t have much time or energy. And jeans are the easy solution when you don’t have time or energy to get ready for a casual drinks date/ movie date/ dinner date/ girls lunch.

So putting the pasta and jean comparison aside (now there’s a sentence I never imagined myself writing) I want to share with you a recipe I wrote specifically for my Mum. I combined all of her favourite ingredients into a pasta dish that I think works really well. I’ve made it a bit special by using fancy squid ink pasta but I have since cooked this many, many times with good old fashioned fettuccine and it tastes just as good. I consider it a different dish altogether when I use the fettuccine, but either way it’s damn delicious and takes about minus half a second to whip up.

PHOODIE’S SQUID INK BOW PASTA WITH ARTICHOKES, LEMON AND PARMESAN

INGREDIENTS

250g Squid Ink Pasta – I used bows but you can use any kind

200g Artichokes (in olive oil)

1/2 bunch Dill

Juice of 2 Lemons

4 tablespoons Olive oil

3 teaspoons Salt

1 teaspoon Pepper

3/4 cup shaved Parmesan

METHOD

1) Cook your pasta as per instructions on the packet.

2) While this is cooking, finely chop the dill, chop the (drained) artichokes into large pieces and add both of these ingredients to a bowl with the lemon juice.

3) Add olive oil (you can use your own or the olive oil from the artichokes) to bowl with artichokes, drain pasta and combine everything together.

4) Season, mix and top with parmesan.

So that’s my dish, can you share some of your favourite pasta dishes with me?!

Phoodie is a cookbook, restaurant, and supermarket obsessed blogger and Mum of 2. Phoodie blogs here, is on Facebook here and tweets here.