More Pasta, Please

You Needn't Swear Off These Carbs

Pasta, like other carbs, has in the past year or two been rehabilitated. At the same time, food manufacturers (the oxymoron says it all) have rushed to clear the shelves of their low-carb science projects. But that doesn’t mean it’s totally safe to go back in the water. Individuals who haven’t forsworn pasta (and no one should) are still well advised to use their heads. It is, as the nutritionists say, a relatively high glycemic food. (I have scant use for glycemic indexing, much less the GI Diet, whose name alone probably puts me off: a friend had to correct my impression that the initials stand for the Gastro-Intestinal Diet.) Suffice it to say, pasta does elevate the insulin level and so can produce cravings for more and more. Loving it so much, I count it as one of my offenders, something I’m prone to overdo without proper care. Especially in a post-low-carb world, it’s important not to lapse into carb abuse.

When I was growing up, we had pasta a few times a month. Since children naturally love it, my mother saw it as a way to make us eat our vegetables. Being a working woman, she developed a few one-dish meals for hectic days (eating in courses is optimal, but in a pinch you can achieve a balanced variety of satisfying foods in one dish). We would get carbohydrates (though no bread was on the table when pasta was served), a leftover piece of chicken or tuna or calf ’s liver was chopped in to take care of our protein needs, and the all important vegetables were let in the back door. In terms of flavor they were the true stars of the dish, though all we knew was that we were eating pasta.

Still, I don’t think it was until I started traveling to Italy with my husband that I truly fell in love with pasta. One summer, while Edward was working on a photo exhibition at Casa Guidi, the Browning home in Florence, we lived in a small hotel along the Arno, in a big room with a view from the terrace. And what a view it was: just above roof level the whole city center spread before our eyes, with the majestic Duomo full-frame and the surrounding hills beyond. “O bella libertà, O bella!” as Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote. Since I wasn’t there to work, I was left in charge of meals and entertainment. I quickly discovered that all the small local food shops had marvelous pasta dishes that I could buy just before Edward “came home” for lunch. Every day we had a different pasta, but remembering my mother’s example, I’d make sure we also had some greens (for extra vitamins and fiber) and some salami or other protein (to promote satiety). To this day, I can’t recall any more elementally perfect meals than those Florentine affairs. Sitting on our little shaded terrace at midday, when everyone in Italy went home for lunch, we enjoyed the most quietly romantic idyll, outside time and worldly cares: warm breezes, good, simple food, a glass of Chianti, and some fruit before settling down for a siesta. Could there be any purer bliss?

Remarkably, we ate pasta every day (sometimes twice a day!), but always in the portion the Italians enjoy, about four ounces. You can easily implement portion control with pasta at home if you weigh it first; no one boils another pot just to eat more pasta, and by the time the water was boiling, you wouldn’t be hungry anyway. I advise saving a bit of the cooking water to add later to moisten the pasta and dilute overly rich sauces.

After a month of this we had not gained an ounce. Sure, we were young, and we walked a lot. But all around us were Italians of every age who were eating likewise and generally not overweight. (If only it were still true today, some two or more decades later, but Italy, like France, is headed away from, not toward, the benefits of gastronomic tradition and moderation.) Why didn’t the Italians of our youth seem to be fat? Simple: it was all a matter of proportion. Like us, they were having pasta with their other food, not other food with their pasta. The key was to eat not just pasta with some bland marinara and pre-grated Parmesan. These were well-considered, balanced meals, almost sufficient unto themselves, to which pasta had been added as a kind of matrix for other things, comprising a wide variety of nutrients and flavors. Eating a relatively small portion of such a “thoughtful” pasta was filling enough to stave off afternoon hunger pangs and snacking: our stomachs, having been taken good care of, were usually content to skip the afternoon gelato treat. When we did have one, we certainly relished it, but never on account of feeling unsatisfied by lunch.

My mother’s trick of mixing vegetables with starch is one French women still deploy, especially as a vegetable delivery system for children. Brillat-Savarin said, “Le nombre des saveurs est infini” (there is an infinite number of flavors). So it is with vegetables and pasta: there is no limit to the ways they can be blended. The vegetables bring the fiber (soluble for slowly released energy, insoluble for bulk and satiety), and the pasta brings a quicker complex-carb energy fix; together they are the perfect time-release package. Ask any endurance athlete.

Recently Edward and I went to dinner at a good neighborhood Italian restaurant in the seventh arrondissement near the Eiffel Tower. It is owned and run by two sisters from Bergamo, helped by an elderly Chinese waiter. The clientele was strictly French, and the place was so packed it was turning away drop-ins—not so common at French restaurants without Michelin stars. Two local couples who had reserved came in with their children, four in all, between the ages of six and twelve, I’d say. The kids had a pasta course, then left. “Call me on my cell as soon as you get home,” the father, still enjoying his appetizer, said to the eldest. Although the kids’ dine-and-dash wasn’t my idea of a meal properly enjoyed en famille, I couldn’t help noting that the pasta had proved itself once again as a fail-safe way to feed the young. And I heard myself, perhaps the kid in me, say, “You know, Edward”—actually, in France I call him Èdouard—“I could eat pasta every day.” I really could, but I don’t. I was enjoying a first course of spaghetti with langoustines. Edward had spaghetti carbonara. We tried each other’s dish, and both were excellent. Fortunately, my inner French woman and not my inner child still calls the shots—usually. I content myself with pasta once every week or so.