gastropod friday

Today is, as declared in previous entries and enthusiastically promoted by galaxy gastropod friday.
I haven’t a whole lot of impressive things to say, what with Friday usually being ‘eat out day’ because it’s the end of the week and we’re tired.
But.
Yesterday I went to the pasta dood over on Lygon St (upper Lygon St, thanks, not that tourist trap end) and spent another ridiculous sum. Mostly because The Squeeze had pleaded tearfully with me to buy him some more fresh pasta from the man.
The pasta shop is great. It only sells pasta, a couple of cheeses, olive oil and tomato paste. If it sold garlic, we’d be set. It might, actually, but I haven’t seen it.
They sell mostly plain pasta, but in every single size and shape, dry (still better than store-bought pasta), frozen (mostly filled, and including gnocchi to die for) and fresh (all in trays like ham at the deli – you buy by the weight). I bought a kilo (or half a kilo?) of frozen cheese-filled round ravioli things (I can’t remember their names – I’ll have to check), a kilo of dry curly-edged fettucini (like parpadelle, but narrower), a kilo of half-circle tubes with frilly edges (dry). I figured it was time to stop at $20, even though the pasta man, once again, was disappointed in my failure to purchase fresh pasta. But I couldn’t be sure of when we’d eat it, and I was running out of room in my backpack.
This pasta is amazing. It’s not a chic, foody-porn shop like the ones in lower Lygon St, with fancy ‘hand tooled’ wooden shelves and quaintly aproned middle aged maggie beer types. It’s got white tiles on most surfaces, big freezers with semi-legible hand-scrawled tags that don’t actually list all the pasta available (but that’s ok as the dood follows you around, fetching stuff out for you), and stacks and stacks of piles of pasta all over the place. There are some wooden shelves, but they’re stacked with bags of pasta, so I’m not sure how chic they are. This is pasta-ville. And you can get decent olive oil (though everyone who Knows pops over to the Mediterranean Supermarket for oil – Note To Self: buy tin of virgin olive oil NOW).
The best bit is the old dood serving you. Quite often when I arrive and push through the not-chic plastic anti-fly strips in the doorway, he’s sitting on a stool in the kitchen area out the back napping. I make sure to stomp so he hears me. I should yell out ‘bon gorno!’ like everyone else in Brunswick, but I’m shy. Then he walks out a little unsteadily to help. He is REALLY old. And really helpful. He knows pasta like nobody knows pastas. He’s also Italian (duh). And nice. And very old-school gentleman, so he’s a little ruffled by the way I stuff everything into my bike and then take it all out to lug on the bike home. We have shared a few chuckles over my having to ride really fast so my frozen stuff doesn’t melt on summer days.
Anyhoo, after that, I busted in on a new veggie shop over the road where i wrangled free home delivery for my goodies from a Russian chick who scared me a bit. It’s cheaper than La Manna, but doesn’t have the range. But still, home delivery. It’s good. Seeing as how I can’t carry all our veggies home in my backpack with pasta.
Then it was off to the IGA on Sydney Rd near Albion St for ‘local’ parmesan. I don’t know what ‘local’ means, but it’s some awesome stinky shit. Hey, anyone know what the difference between pecorino and parmesan is? I also bought some procutio, some ham, some awesome mozarella, some spicey sausage slices (dunno the name), some semi-dried tomatos, forgot to count varieties of olives (there are 12 at the safeway near the bike path), got some shitty skip wafer biscuits (i couldn’t find the italian ones which rock – need to go to the med. sup.) and went home.
We had less than excellent pizza (Squeeze liked it, I wasn’t convinced) that night and enjoyed all that good shit.
But tonight is pasta night. Filled pasta with some little meat balls I made a while ago with Nino and Joe mince (man they rocked!) and froze raw. They’ll be served with either a tomatoey sauce or a spinachy one. I will see how I feel. If I’d remembered I’d have picked up some boconcini to make yum-o basil, tomato, baby spinach and boconcini salad as well.
So I guess it really was a gastropod Thursday, what with me stuffing all that goodness into my excellent backpack. I was a little, wheeled snail with a house full of food on my back.