Chapter 5: Pasta

I invited a friend over for dinner. She is having an interview at Microsoft and I told her to come over before she leaves for her flight. We used to go to the same college back when we were both undergraduate students. I told her to come over for dinner, but I'm not sure what to cook. I can't cook Tahchin because I don't have yogurt. I can't cook any Khoresh because I don't have the stew meat that is needed for most of them. So on my way back to home I decide on pasta, I have everything that I need and I haven't made it in a very long time. I get home, wash my hands and quickly start on making the sauce. I let it stay on the stove for an hour so that the meat is completely cooked and then start on the pasta. After the water is boiled, I empty a pack of pasta noodles, break them into half and put them into the boiling pot. As the noodles are getting softer and softer, I twirl the boiling water and with that twirling my mind goes back to when I first had pasta.

My aunt graduated from University of Maryland. At the time she told me this, I had no idea where it was or the importance of it. Now that I had applied to about 20 universities in the US, have been to college park and have a friend who is getting her PhD in there, I know it's a big deal! She came back to Iran after she got her degree and I'm always grateful for her coming back and being a part of our lives. Because if she taught us nothing else, she definitely taught us about American cuisine.

I had my first pancakes, my first fried chicken, my first pudding and my first pasta at her place. My favorite is her pasta because no one could ever get it close to how hers tasted, not even with following her recipe. It tasted like fresh tomatoes, garlic, onion and a bunch of aromatic leaves have all been melted together. We always thought the key to her cooking being so different that anyone else is the love and passion she puts into it. The way she put salt and pepper with her hands on top of the cooking pan, the way she tasted the food with her wooden ladle and the look on her eyes when she knew it was just right, that is something that I hadn't seen else where, until I found this cute little restaurant.

I don't remember when I first went there, it was probably my best friend and partner in crime, Shadi that always took me to these cozy little restaurants and coffee shops that first found that place. It was a few blocks away from our university building, on perhaps the most educated street in Tehran where people usually go to find books, sit in cafes and discuss intellectual matters, Enghelab street.

If you passed it by, you would think it's probably a coffee shop,  and a very small one. But a closer look would have revealed that there are two cooks, standing right there at the back of the place, with their oven and cooking material, cooking pasta. That was the second best pasta that I had, in that little restaurant, with the two owners who cooked right next to you and served you the food themselves.

There were hardly 5 tables there, but they were clothed with tiled red table cloths. They had colorful plates to go with their colorful drinks. They had all sorts of Araghijat and traditional Iranian drinks with mint leaves inside. It just felt like home, like your mom is cooking for you and she will bring it to your table any second. That place became my favorite restaurant right after that first visit and I would go there many times in the course of my 4-year-undergraduate studies.

It was there that Salim and I went for our very first Sepandarmazgan celeberation. I had bought him a book and he got me a pursue that I really wanted. We were exchanging gifts that one of the two ladies came to our table. She asked us, with a smile that revealed her knowing the answer to her question already, what the occasion was for us exchanging gifts. As she heard our answer, she walked back to their kitchen, got us some chocolates and told us that she really liked us celebrating the Iranian day for celebration of love instead of Valentine's day. Then she went back to the kitchen, where her own love was cooking, because there was no doubt that the two of them were in love, and their love for each other and for food was what made that place so special.

I look at my half broken noodles boiling in the pot and remember that she once told me when we were eating lunch there, that the pasta noodles should be cooked full length. That is the proper way to do it and that people should be educated not to cut them in half when they are eating them. They should be using a spoon and try to twirl the noodles around their fork with the help of the spoon as a base. She would've been disappointed in me if she were to look into my pot. But then again my pasta is not even half as good as hers so nobody cares.