Garrubbo - Sunday pasta : a year around the table with family and friends

For my father, Mario Vittorio Orlando Garrubbo, 19412002.

What a guy.

Why Sunday Pasta?

Italian food has always been a central part of my life. As a child, Sunday afternoons were spent at my grandparents homes gathering with family and friends after church. Everything revolved around the meal: long antipasto courses, followed by pasta and meat and vegetables. Food was the magnet that drew us all together.

And, the food was delicious. My maternal mother, Mary Ciccone, made the best rag napoletano and meatballs Ive ever tasted. Anywhere. She passed this legacy on to my mother, Rosemary, who taught me to cook at a young age. My father, Mario, taught me to be critical about Italian food, to seek excellence and authenticity. His proud Sicilian mother Virginia Garrubbo lived to cook and, after 60 years of the craft, could rival any chef in anything Italian, from any region, appetizer to pastry. At restaurants, all eyes were upon her as we awaited her critical judgment of the food. I am lucky to have been raised in a delightful vortex of Italian comfort food.

I met some colorful characters during those meals, from doctors and lawyers to tailors and barbers, mostly Italian immigrants. I remember the laughing and arguingand the decibel levellike it was yesterday. More than anything, I remember these slow-paced and conversational dinners as a weekly ritual that defines what family means to me.

Nowadays, it seems we are in constant motion, with every moment of the day compulsively planned. We schedule ourselves and our kids beyond capacity. We want more, and we want it faster. But in so doing, we have created a culture of stress and immediacy without reflection.

And so, a few years back, sparked by the death of my father, I decided that I wanted to do my small part to remind us all to stop and smell the basil. To me, the answer was obvious: PASTA. Why Pasta? Because pasta is the food of kings and paupers: it is affordable, versatile, and easy to prepare, and fun to share. Well prepared pasta dishes include fresh, local, seasonal vegetables, dairy, meats and seafood, which in turn support healthy eating, the environment, the community and local food sourcing. These concepts seem trendy now, but are actually the result of the 3,000 years of evolution in Italian cooking. It is all right here, right now, right under our noses! All we need to do is slow down long enough to enjoy it.

I created a website, The Garrubbo Guide, and a blog, Sunday Pasta, to preserve and promote authentic Italian cooking and its many benefits. Every Sunday during the past five years, I have prepared a different pasta recipe for family and friends. Along with the recipe, Ive included a wine pairing, some history about the ingredients, and a few personal musings. I call it Sunday Pasta because those two words capture the spirit of the idyllic family dinners that I remember so fondly. They say it all.

Sunday Pasta is a simple yet powerful idea: one delicious, nutritious meal per week, prepared with care and shared with those we love, will help all of us to enjoy the simple pleasures of life. In turn, it will inspire us to appreciate all the links in the chain, from plants to animals to people, who make our abundant foods available to us. So grab family and friends and start your very own Sunday Pasta tradition. Its easy. Its fun. Its delicious.

Edwin Garrubbo

Inside Sunday Pasta

This book contains just 54 recipes, many of which would be considered widely popular in Italy. I have endeavored to provide only authentic Italian recipes, since my goal is to promote authenticity, and to highlight the Italian way of eating pasta. Many recipes come from my grandmothers, while others are from the Italian chefs and restaurants around Italy and the world that further inspire my love of Italian food. As a suggestion, the book offers one recipe for each week of the year, arranged chronologically, with consideration for the season, weather, and local ingredients. Of course, you can eat any of them at any time of year. They are generally quick and easy to prepare, and almost all allow for substitutions. If I can make them, anyone can, so try them all.

Each recipe is accompanied by a wine pairinga short paragraph that provides the basic information you need to find the right wine for your pasta dish. The pairings were written by Christy Canterbury, MW, one of the 32 Masters of Wine in the United States, and an expert in Italian wines. Of course, wines from other parts of the world will do, but, understandably, I wanted an Italian focus. Also, in Italy, perhaps more than anywhere else, wine and food go hand in hand as part of the same culinary experience. We have endeavored to make the suggestions accessible to everyone, regardless of geographic location. Keep in mind, it is more important to note the qualities of the wines that match the ingredients of the dish rather than the exact wine mentioned.