Letter from the Kitchen
Have you ever decided to clean one drawer and wound up pulling the whole kitchen apart?
That’s where I am today. I got frustrated with my utensil drawer — and the next thing I knew, every counter was full.
I gave it ten minutes. It took four hours.
But here’s what happened in those four hours: I started editing. Getting rid of kitchen things has always been hard for me. These tools aren’t just tools. My best knives are over thirty years old. My copper and All-Clad pans. My dad’s cast iron, which might be closer to sixty. Things that have done real work, for a long time, in more than one kitchen.
Some of it had to go. In the interest of making room for new and better things, I let it. However, none of the above-mentioned items were in the pile.
My cabinets are clean. I have a “new” drawer for dried pasta. I’m staying away from the closets. And I’m on a first-name basis with the guys at the Salvation Army drop-off.
This week: pasta. The tools worth keeping. The vegetables worth adding. The dish worth making all summer long.
Last Week, You Answered
Spiralizer: daily driver or cabinet ornament?
Cabinet ornament. Decisively.
Only a handful of you reach for it regularly — and I get it. It’s a commitment. But here’s what I’d offer: if it’s living in a cabinet, pull it out once in a while.
One of my favorite ways to keep my pasta portions in check and my vegetable intake up is to spiralize zucchini and toss it right in with angel hair or spaghetti. The pasta cooks as usual. The zucchini goes in at the last minute — barely a minute in the water, just enough to soften. Same pot. Different ratio.
No spiralizer? A vegetable peeler makes wide, flat noodles that work beautifully. Toss them with a little salt and let them sit for ten minutes. Quick rinse, and they’re ready. No heat required.
The spiralizer isn’t the point.
Lemon Basil Zucchini Pappardelle →
Zucchini Spaghetti with Macerated Tomatoes, Sweet Corn, Green Beans, and Pesto→
Join Me at the Table
Pop-Up Pasta · Two dates · Kitchen Classroom, Twin Cities
Sunday, July 12 · 1 PM
Friday, July 17 · 6:30 PM
This is a hands-on class. We work with the dough, the filling, the shapes. Tortellini. Sacchetti. Ravioli. Basil pesto in a mortar and pestle.
If you’ve been wanting to understand and enjoy making pasta — this is the class. Two dates and times available.
These pasta classes are limited to 6 people, and fill up quickly.
The Podcast Hook
Episode 9 — The Art of Pasta: Tradition, Technique & Joy
Dropping tomorrow, Friday, July 11, 7:30 AM· bonicellicookingclub.com/podcast
My grandmother taught me to roll pasta dough with a broomstick - which was a perfect rolling pin. We hung the pasta over the broomstick between two chairs to dry. To me, it made the kitchen smell like a Sunday.
Episode 9 is just me — no guest — talking through pasta the way I actually think about it: where it came from, how to make it well, and what role it can honestly play in a healthy diet. I’ve replaced the broomstick with some very fancy equipment. But every once in a while, I still reach for the rolling pin.
Upcoming · Episode 10 — Announcing next week.
What’s Happening in the Kitchen
This Friday, July 10, I’ll be on KSTP’s Twin Cities Live for the 4 PM segment — live pasta demo with hosts Elizabeth and Ben. We’re making pesto by hand and rolling and cutting pasta on air. It’s one thing to talk about fresh pasta. It’s another to hand someone a rolling pin and see what happens.
The demo is tied to the Pop-Up Pasta classes happening this Sunday and Friday the 17th in the Kitchen Classroom. There are also pasta classes coming up on the 25th at the Minneapolis Farmers Market — more on that soon.
Episode 9 of the podcast drops tomorrow. This one is personal. I’ve been making pasta since I was a child, and this episode gave me a reason to say so out loud.
The Skill: The New Basics
Pasta and Vegetables: The Ratio Trick
The Quick Win
You don’t have to choose between pasta and vegetables. Start with this: for every two ounces of dry pasta, add one full cup of vegetables — spiralized, ribboned with a peeler, or cut up and roasted. The pasta stays, but the portion shrinks. The plate looks full because it is full.
The Most Common Mistake
Thinking pasta has to be the center of the meal. It isn’t. In much of Italian cooking, it’s one part of something larger — a bridge between the beginning of the meal and the main event. When you treat it that way, having a smaller portion stops being a compromise.
One Tool Worth Having
A spiralizer. Specifically, the kind with interchangeable blades that handles zucchini, carrots, and beets easily. Mine gets used more than almost anything in that drawer I just cleaned out. It stayed.
Recipe Spotlight
MM Blue
Summer Vegetable Pasta
The Soul
This dish doesn’t come together the way most pasta does. Each component — the pasta, the pesto, the vegetables — has its own space on the plate. You eat it engaged, deciding with each forkful what combination you want. The burrata sits in the center, intact, until you pierce it. Then the cream spreads into everything, and the dish becomes something else entirely.
The Bridge
Make this all summer, and make it differently every time. That’s the point. I use whatever looks best at the farmers market — what’s ripe, what’s local, what showed up that week. Italians eat by the season. In Minnesota, our local season is short. This is the dish that makes the most of it.
The Mediterranean Edit
Pasta week means pasta tools. Two I reach for every time.
Tool
Tacapasta by Marcato
Sturdy, well-designed, and the center wand is the detail that makes it. It fits over each rung so you can lift and transfer fresh pasta without stretching or tangling. Mine has been used hard and shows no sign of stopping. That’s the whole case for buying a good one.
Tool
Spiralizer
My spiralizer is a much-used tool in my kitchen — and it earned its spot in a drawer this week. Zucchini and carrots into noodles, served mixed with traditional pasta or on their own. It adds color, texture, and a legitimate reason to use less pasta without feeling like you’re using less pasta.
Cookbook Chronicles
I spent part of the July 4th weekend making colored pasta — spinach, spirulina, and beet powder — several batches, several colors and combinations, one very messy and rewarding afternoon.
The result: natural dyes fade when you cook them. Much of the color goes into the water. The pasta still tasted exactly right, and the shapes — tortellini, folded, turned, and pinched — were some of the cutest I’ve made. The winners, in terms of not fading, were turmeric (orange) and spinach (green).
Before You Go
Fresh lemon or good vinegar — which one do you reach for first? Pick one.
Until next Thursday — keep a good olive oil on the counter and don’t be afraid to use it. — Chef Laura
Just have to share my zucchini noodle tip. I put my doodles in a colander & toss with sauce like you taught me. When my noodles are done I just pour the water & noodles over the zucchini. Voila!
The pictures are so spectacular. Adds so much to your writing. Wish I lived closer.