Arevalo - The Pasta Friday Cookbook

Table of Contents

Introduction:

Pasta Friday by Season

A recipe for every week of the year:

What is Pasta Friday and How to Start Your Own Tradition

Its Pasta Friday, its Pasta Friday!

This is what my husband and I hear every Friday morning, around 7:00 a.m., when our two young boys barge into our room and start jumping on our bed. Its their favorite day of the week, because every Friday night our house is packed with close to fifty people, including friends, family, neighbors, and children. I cook a giant pot of pasta and make an equally giant salad, and our guests bring the wine. Its casual, with people grabbing pieces of fresh mozzarella from the counter and kids running around with thick, buttered slices of bread in hand (though half of them are feeding their bread to our dog). But mostly youll find everyone laughing and relaxing after a long week and thankful that they dont have to cook dinner. Friends who I wouldnt normally see for months at a time now gather around my table every week. New bonds and new support systems are formed, and a new way to share meals (for this generation, at least). We call it Pasta Fridayand it changed our life.

How Pasta Friday Became a Thing

To start at the beginning means taking you back to Hewlett, New York, in the early nineties. The meatballs are frying on the stove and the pigskin simmering in the sauce, at my great-grandmothers house. Every week after church my family would gather for Sunday supper, a pasta feast prepared by a ninety-two-year-old woman who needed to stand on a stepstool to flip the meatballs. This was how my family, and many Italian families on Long Island, spent their Sundays. It was a glorious childhood made up of red sauce, plastic-covered couches, cousins, and cheek pinching.

But I grew up and moved across the country, and traditions faded. The Sunday suppers had instilled in me a love of food, community, and familyand the importance of having all these things in my life on a consistent basis. I dreamt of opening a business, a restaurant, incorporating these values. I just didnt know quite how to do it yet.

After years of working corporate marketing jobs, I took the leap and, with a friend, opened a restaurant in Oakland, California, dedicated to macaroni and cheese. We chose mac and cheese because we loved how it made people smile and because no one else in the Bay Area was doing it. This little mac and cheese restaurant turned out to be a huge success. I was featured on national media outlets, wrote a mac and cheese cookbook, and grew the business to two locations. It was a community gathering spot, a place where families went to celebrate special occasions and young couples had their first dates. I had two baby boys, a loving husband, and the restaurant I always wanted. It was the kind of success most people only dream about.

But things changed. The restaurant grew into a big business. My days were filled with strategy meetings, workers comp meetings, meetings about three-year plans, and meetings about meetings. I was miserable. I turned into an insomniac. I dreaded getting up in the morning to go to work, even though it was a company that I created.

So I left. I sold my shares and walked away from the business that I literally built from an empty shell.

It was one of the toughest decisions of my life, and I second-guessed myself, wondering if leaving a successful business in exchange for my sanity was the right thing to do. It was a dark time for me. Besides my anxiety over the business, my then four-year-old son, Nico, needed a risky surgery, and my sister was battling stage four cancer. The only time I felt better and stopped worrying was when I was cooking for my friends. So I invited them over every Friday for pasta. I made it official the week after my grandmother died at the end of August in 2017. It felt right to honor her memory by starting a tradition that promoted the values she instilled in me.

And it became a feast! Suddenly, I had one hundred people on my email list, and every week more and more people would show up, with bottles of wine in hand, excited to forget their own troubles and to connect with new people over heaping plates of pasta with Bolognese or pesto or clam sauce. Parents with young children would tell me it felt like a night out, a chance to socialize again. We were building a community, and our kids were, too! We suddenly had a list of people to call when we needed a last-minute babysitter, or a lead on a new job, or someone to listen when we wanted to vent about our day. And, we put our phones down. This was old-school interaction. Our fancy gadgets might as well have been Polaroids, because the only time we picked them up was to snap photos of the kids with sticky fingers or the mountains of pasta we were about to enjoy.

You dont have to cook for a crowd to reap the benefits of this tradition. Whether youre cooking for your family or just a few friends, the act of sitting together over a bowl of pasta can be transformational and healing. Youll get hooked. I guarantee it.

This cookbook is a collection of the recipes and stories that changed my life, and I think theyll change yours, too.

How to Start Your Own Pasta Friday

After hosting these gatherings for more than a year, I learned a few things that make cooking for a crowd easier. The most important tip I can give you, and one that may only be possible after you have a few of these dinners under your belt, is to relax. These dinners are meant to be casual gatherings of family and friends, not elegant dinner parties. Your table does not need to look like a Pinterest board!

Youre making pasta and salad, and thats itno appetizers and no desserts. The only dessert I allow are Popsicles for the kids. Also, its okay if your laundry isnt folded. No one will mind if the food isnt ready as soon as they get there. I know its hard; Im a perfectionist, too, but it gets easier. Heres a list of other tricks Ive learned along the way:

• Setting expectations is the key. Send out a weekly e-mail letting people know how to RSVP, what to bring (and more importantly, what not to bring), and what time to leave. I ask guests to bring a bottle of wine per adult, because people drink a lot when theyre eating pasta, and I also ask for no desserts, other than Popsicles for the kids. The last thing I want is a pile of stale cookies left at my house. Lastly, I ask them to leave by 9:00 p.m.because, you know... kids.
• Know your limit. Whether you want ten or fifty people, know your limit, and cut off the RSVPs when you hit it. You can do this by using an online sign-up sheet or by simply e-mailing the group when all the spots are filled.
• Keep it casual. This is not the dinner for your good china or fancy tablecloth. Use compostable plates and forks, and even aluminum trays for the salads, to make clean up easier. Or better yet, ask guests to bring their own plates! And you dont need seats for everyone. Guests dont mind standing and chatting while theyre eating.