In John Guare’s play “Six Degrees of Separation,” there’s a scene in which a father asks a second grade teacher, at parents night, why the art her students make is so especially brilliant. “Look at the first grade,” he says to her. Blotches of green and black.
Look at the third grade. Camouflage. But the second grade — your grade.
Matisses everyone. You’ve made my child a Matisse. Let me study with you.
Let me into second grade! What is your secret? And this is what she said: “Secret? I don’t have any secret. I just know when to take their drawings away from them.” I think of this scene every time I make the sort of pasta dish that’s known in our house as pasta nada.
The key to a true pasta nada is deep restraint. The Zen-secret is knowing when to stop. Pasta nada is better known to the world as pantry pasta.
These are the pasta dishes you make, vastly better and less expensive than ordering out, from ingredients that are already in your kitchen. There are dozens of books, thousands of articles and many industrious websites devoted to the making of pantry pastas. The more the merrier; I like nearly all of them.
But once I heard the phrase pasta nada for the first time three decades ago, I’ve never called it anything else. Names matter. Would you rather eat calf’s thymus, or sweetbreads? Would “The Joy of Sex” be a cultural touchstone if it had been issued under its original title, “Alex Comfort’s Gourmet Guide to Lovemaking”? A good name .
