February 8

I just took a fun survey and found out I prefer pasta over pizza. I think I knew it all the time but then this survey helped me get a better insight :D. Though kids of my generation will always agree that our introduction into the world of Italian food was through the Pizza only. There was a time when if you were a person who had had a pizza, then you automatically became an elite in everyone's eyes - true blue cosmopolitan! Pizzas entered the Indian food market around the 1980s but it was not until 1996 that some American fast food chains set up shop with their pan pizzas. The craze for pizza started to wane, when its relation with obesity started doing the rounds. As Indians became more and more inclined towards healthy eating, pizza got categorized as junk food. 

Over the years, Pasta became the new pizza of the Indian food lovers, especially for the urban middle classes. And during last year during the lockdown, the consumption and varieties increased multifold. Home chefs started preferring it over pizza, because it is easy to make and could be prepared in bulk and even in its reheated form it tasted delicious, unlike pizza which has to be consumed fresh. Also, you can add a lot of veggies into it and make it into a nutritious meal. I am a non vegetarian but when it comes to pasta, I love having it vegetarian. At home I usually load it up with oodles of fresh seasonal vegetables. At times there is more veggies on my plate than pasta and I I totally love it that way.

I think I have mentioned it before also, but my introduction to pink sauce in a pasta was very recent, like 3 -4 years back. I had gone to this restaurant in Koregoan Park in Pune. It is a pure vegetarian restaurant serving global cuisines. The friend suggested to try out their pasta and customized it, asking the chef to prepare it in 'pink' sauce which was not on the menu. I was intrigued by the sound of pink sauce. The friend then explained it to me, that actually it would be like a mélange of the red and white sauce. Now I am not someone who is very fond of the red sauce in a pasta, I will always side with a good white sauce. The dish was served and it looked pretty with a subtle pink hued sauce. With a tad little apprehension I took the first spoonful and was in heaven. It tasted subtle, silky, crunchy veggie loaded - perfect in every sense. 

The takeaway from that experience was that now I always try making a pink sauce and put lots of veggies in my pasta. I don't usually put a lot of cheese in my pasta hence I try to add a dollop more of fresh cream in the sauce. But cheese lovers, you can go a little crazy on the cheese content if you wish. When I am not indulging in Chinese on a weekend, its pasta what I would end up making.

PS. I got this super cute pink pasta bowl from a Japanese store in a mall a few week back and it has become my new favorite dish to have pasta in!

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