Being of Italian extraction, pasta is never too far from my thoughts. Whenever I’m not feeling 100%, a good pasta dish always seems to pick me up. That’s why I’ve started wondering if it’s possible that pasta has medicinal qualities? I’m not sure if it does, but for me it seems to…

My medicine of choice is always a good, clean, tomato-based sauce served on a bed of homemade fettucine drizzled with olive oil. Whenever I make sauce – I guess like most of you – I do the normal things. I start with good quality tomatoes, onion, and a super healthy amount of garlic. But the secret of the sauce – for me anyway – is in the veal that I’ve pan-fried earlier. You see I like to cook the veal in the sauce. This brings out a colossal powerhouse of flavor that borders on unbeatable. It also brings something to the veal that is quite special.

The smell of garlic and veal wafting through my house always makes me feel super charged again…

Speaking of being super charged, I recently found a recipe for Pizzoccheri at OrganicFoodee.com. Pizzoccheri is a Northern Italian pasta made from a combination of buckwheat flour and durum wheat. According to Ysanne, the guru of organic cooking and the driving force behind OrganicFoodee.com, it’s easy to roll out using a wooden rolling pin. I’m going to give it a try.

It’s interesting, one of the first books I ever read on organic cooking was by Ysanne Spevack. There isn’t much she doesn’t know about organic food and its preparation, so I might ask Ysanne if pasta can act as a medicine…

Ciao – Tony