PASTA

Last night I went to a restaurant in Cuneo called Just Pasta (It's really hip to have stuff be in english over here...).

Everything literally was JUST PASTA.

The menus were little flip books and every page was a huge picture of one type of pastas. The picture was labeled with arrows pointing to everything in that type. The book had different sections, the first was alcohol (pasta made with vodka in the sauce, etc.), classic (spaghetti with fresh tomatoes and basil), with vegetables or Legumes, Specialties, Meat, Fruit, and Dessert.
There were well over 100 different types of pasta to order.
There were pastas with edible little flowers, with strawberries... you name it!

I ended up ordering linguini alla puttinesca which was with olives and capers, in a magically flavor infused tomatoe sauce. I was in HEAVEN.

There were 9 of us total. Me, Elisa (my italian turtor who is a college student at a university in Torino, but lives on a farm in a tiny little town with a library that is only one room, and is run by volunteers), Simona (the sister of Elisa who goes to my school, we have talked on facebook before, but this is the first time we've met), Lorenza (friend of Simona who is actually an identical triplet), Sabrina (best friend of Elisa), and four other friends of Elisa.
They all knew a lot of english, but the whole evening we spoke in italian,only occasionally needing english to understand one another (I like to think that I spoke my italian with pride and grace, but maybe I was just happy I could communicate).

One suprising thing about northern italians is that they have extremely low tolerance for spicy foods. IT wasn't until after Elisa tried my pasta and admitted that her tongue was on fire perchè era troppo piccantè (because it was too spicy) that I even relized that it was spicy at all!
Because I live in exotic Arizona so near to Mexico, northern italians marvel at my love for spice.
Turns out that my linguini alla puttinesca was a roman and therefor southern italian recipe.

Everyone ordered one pasta each, but we shared everything, so I also tried some of Simona's tiny little ravioli with vegetables inside (but really tasted more like creamy salty elegance all wrapped up and drizzled in hot olive oil), and someone elses pasta that is hard to explain. I have never seen the type of pasta, or that type of sauce before in my life. The noodles were tiny little disc/ frisbe shaped things with a rich--but not heavy--white cheese sauce (nothing like alfredo sauce which doesn't exist in Italy). It was thick and delicious, and I loved it all!

Beverage-wise there pitcher/vase-like things of water to pour in these artistic, classy little goblet/cup things, but also me and three other girls split a bottle of white wine (I've found that my taste for white wine has grown being in Itlay where the hills surrounding Fossano are coveres in grapevines).

Then for Dessert--please try to contain your burning curiosity and excitement--we all split one big dish of hot penne pasta covered in nutella and walnuts. And yes it was very much like pure love on a plate.

So there you go.

Another meal happily devoured!