In a scandalous act of shocking laziness, I’m going to plagiarize myself for today’s post. (I have to get to work soon!) This appeared in the Guardian this week, I wrote it! So I’m just going to repeat myself here, with the original un-edited version. Ready?
Every city has its shantytowns, tenements, projects and favelas; cramped, tightly-knit urban regions in which people are thrown together, joined by poverty and a sense of stagnation. These spaces form a teeming world of their own within the larger macrocosm of the city, connected but self-contained. Life is stacked upon life in a confined area, making the situation rife for story telling; a perfect stage setting of tension and drama. People struggle to survive from day to day, and dream of escape. They form a network of friendship and support, but crowded conditions breed pressure, and the threat of violence is never distant. Privacy is scarce when one person’s front door opens onto another’s and a network of alleys or balconies forms the veins that connect them all. This is brilliant fodder for movies, but it makes for good songs, as well. So this week’s Sunday interactive playlist is on the subject of cramped urban housing.

Here’s a picture that Isaac drew a few weeks ago. He started drawing “city towers,” and then he got caught up drawing these crazy rambling houses that sprawl up the hillside, and connect and expand and have levels and layers and turrets. The oval area in front is an underground space where they meet (and apparently practice math facts!)
This pasta is kind of like his labyrinthine spread. It’s handmade pasta for people who don’t have a pasta maker. What you do is this…you make pasta dough (which is fun and easy!) You roll it as thin as you possibly can (which is a bit of work, but also fun!) You cut it into any shape you like – triangles, squares, rectangles. You fill each one with a spoonful of delicious filling, then you wrap it up any way you like – each one a different shape. Some you roll in tubes, some you make in pockets. Some you put seam-side down, some you put seam-side up. You pile them on top of each other or next to each other. (You try not to get too great a concentration of layers of pasta in one place, so it’s not stodgy.) You cover them with a delicious smoky sauce made of pine nuts and roasted red peppers. You sprinkle mozzarella on top. You bake the pasta. It has nice soft pockets of filling, some lovely melty cheese, some crispy parts where the pasta sticks out and crisps up as it bakes. And then you eat it! You could also easily use this filling and this sauce to make lasagna, stuffed shells, manicotti, or any other sort of stuffed baked pasta that you buy at the store. And that’s that!

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