Making homemade pasta was one of the hobbies that helped many keep their sanity during quarantine, but for some, it was an opportunity to push their culinary skills to the next level.
Writer Stephanie Gravalese admits that she fell for the Instagram food waves: sourdough, whipped coffee, and banana bread. But then, she vowed to do something bold and unique: learn to make 100 different shapes of pasta.
“Why 100? There are approximately 350 pasta shapes documented in Italian cuisine,” she wrote in an article this week. “While I'd love to try to make all of them at least once in my life, 100 felt like a nice round number, something I can put my heart into that wasn’t a short term project.”
This isn’t a new hobby for Stephanie, a resident of Upstate New York. Pasta became her beloved hobby two years ago after she traveled in Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna, eventually enrolling solo in an Airbnb pasta-making class with newlyweds.
She returned home “armed with recipes for two different types of pasta dough, a foundation of pasta shapes and the experience of making pasta in 90-degree heat.”
Then she dove into the books, and followed the Pasta Grannies on YouTube. “Fresh, frozen or dried,” she made it all, before realizing that she, “could only eat so much.”
“Learning 100 shapes gives me 100 different ways to share my craft with someone. My goal to make 100 different pasta shapes will give me 100 ways to be present, and 100 ways to feed someone,” she wrote, not yet at the finish line. (She has made 45 so far.)
Now that the weather is warmer, Stephanie says being in the kitchen with dough on her hands is just like that summer in Italy. Whether she makes one or one-hundred different shapes, her takeaway from this journey is different than you might expect.
“The motivation to make pasta wasn't about sitting down to eat it, but about sharing and giving away,” she wrote. “Research shows that cooking and baking can boost the maker's mood, and that's what pasta is for me. I get joy in making pasta and sharing it with people around me.”