Personal essays
My first word for 2024 is about looking back to look forward
Homemade pasta
There’s something about pasta in Italy (and pizza - but that’s for another post).
The texture is perfect. A bit firmer than we tend to find here but a nice chew and still stretchy.
The shape of the pasta pairs perfectly with the sauce and just the right amount of sauce clings to the noodle. The pasta doesn’t swim in sauce the way it does here.
The portions are, as my old chef Michael use to say, to feed you not to fatten you.
I’ve been on a quest since returning to Italy recently to make a pasta this good at home.
I’ve tried semolina and all-purpose flour. I’ve tried with egg and without. I’ve added some olive oil.
Recently, I’ve used half and half semolina and AP with an egg per 110g of flour and a little olive oil added. Since I’ve been rolling out the noodles and cutting them by hand I’ve also ground black pepper into the dough to give it more flavor.
I boil the fresh noodles for 2-3 minutes and then toss them in a sauce along with some of the pasta water.
The first attempt yielded noodles that were very good but way too thick so I’ve learned to roll them much thinner than I thought I needed.
Of course they swell up a bit in the water.
With time I got a feel for the dough and was turning out some beautiful pasta dough that made really nice noodles.
And then…
While Maggie was home I made a sausage and tomato sauce and wanted to make bucatini to go with it.
So I took out my machine and extruded the noodles and it was a disaster.
The noodles stuck together as they came out and soon the noodles were only coming out one of the six holes.
I persevered and made enough to pretend it was a proper pasta dish. It tasted good but it didn’t match the image in my head.
If you’ve ever seen the show “Nailed it”, I imagine Nicole showing me a picture of an Italian bucatini dish beautifully plated. “Here’s what you were trying to accomplish,” she’d say pressing a button to reveal my sorry looking dish, “and here’s what you made.”
Nailed it.
As I was cleaning up the machine - you need to use a machine if you’re going to extrude the pasta dough - I noticed that there was a lot of dough left inside that hadn’t made it to the exit. The dough was too wet.
When I mix the dough by hand I can feel when the dough is too wet or too dry and make adjustments. I should have stopped the machine now and then and felt the dough and added more flour or a little water.
Lesson learned.
Next I cleaned out the brass plate that I extrude the dough through to shape it. Bits of pepper had clogged up all of the holes but one. Using coarsely ground pepper worked fine when I was using a rolling pin to make the noodles but it completely got in the way of the extrusion process.
Again, lesson learned.
And yet the bigger lesson about learning lessons remains unlearned.
Reconciling the log
When I worked in radio, the traffic department would deliver a log each day with all of the commercials scheduled.
It would tell us what time each ad ran.
But things go wrong.
Sometimes the ad hasn’t been recorded in time so it’s not available to play.
Sometimes someone has forgotten to update the ad so last week’s ad runs and the client won’t pay for it.
Sometimes there’s a mistake and one car ad runs right before another car ad. On the radio, clients expect product separation so that their ad doesn’t run next to a competitor’s.
Sometimes, in the old days when the DJ had to do a live read over part of the jingle, there’s a mistake in the copy or the read.
Sometimes, in the old days when the ads weren’t all in some computer, the DJ would grab and play the wrong ad.
Whatever went wrong, the person in charge of running the ad would make a note in the log and the traffic department would reconcile the log.
If they hadn’t gone home for the day, they might be able to fix the problem by scheduling the ad later in the day or in the next day’s schedule. If they couldn’t fix the problem, then they would mark the ad as not played.
In any case, reconciling the log involved updating the information in the computer so that it matched what had actually happened and not just what had been scheduled.
ToDos
I’ve long thought about writing a todo app where scheduling the upcoming day would be central to the app.
Reconciling the day is also important.
While I’m living through my day, what things were skipped or moved and why?
After the day is over, are the things that I’ve put off multiple times? Should I keep them on my todo list or accept that I’m never going to get to them?
Am I spending too much time scrolling aimlessly through social media? What should I do about that?
My first word for 2024 is “Reconcile”.
Each year I choose three words to help steer my year. I learned this practice from Chris Brogan many years ago.
“Reconcile” is my first word for this year. I’m going to try to be more aware of the differences between what I plan to do each day and what I actually do.
I’m hoping there will be lessons learned.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 197. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe