h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

How spoiled am I by consumer society? Yesterday in the supermarket, I found myself feeling aggrieved that they no longer stock orecchiete or trofie, so I had to make do with penne.

If I had the first clue what you were on about I'd be able to say...but I bet you're a Waitrose man.

I haven't seen trofie at a supermarket before, but I just bought some orecchiete at the World Market on Saturday. I'll think of you when I make it. I love the way the "ears" hold the sauce.

Nah. They don't have Waitrose in my country.


Funny about orecchiete holding the sauce - because the traditional dish is 'orecchiete con rapa' (rapa = the thin kind of broccoli), which doesn't have sauce. Apparently they're shaped by the thumbs of old ladies.

My Scouse-Italian pal tells me they used to have furious family arguments about which kind of pasta to have with which sauce. These things are important!

I've seen old ladies making oreccheite before. When I was younger, a couple of school friends- sisters- would have me over for dinner sometimes, and their mother and grandmother would have been making them all day. We would eat them off the table and be shooed from the kitchen. Their mother used to come after us with a broom.

Is the rapa the same as broccoli rabe? I love that.

Surely I don't always use the "right" pasta with the "right" sauce.

I'll be making some gnocchi soon. I love gnocchi with a plain tomato/garlic/thyme sauce.

Now this is oddly synchronicitous (is that even a word?):

http://www.chow.com/stories/11099?tag=left_column;stories

>synchronicitous<

Looks like a word to me.

Carl Jung though was a big fan of 'synchroncity'.

pastas! But they haven't got the new one designed by Alessi (I think it ws Alessi. Some -as- Italian dsigner, anyway)

I insist on serving a simple tomato-basil sauce with buccatini...but this causes domestic arguments.

As for synchronicitous...yup - the joy of English is that we can make up new words whenever we fancy...and don't let anyone tell you different!

gtg. There's a scarab beetle tapping at my window...