Pasta lover, lover
Recently diagnosed as gluten-intolerant, lifelong pasta enthusiast Tumi Morake was utterly bereft until she discovered some unexpected alternatives
There are few things in life you can take away from me and leave me feeling like my soul has been torn out. Pasta is high on that list. It is my happy food.
(No hun, I don’t make my own pasta –
I’ve been in a committed relationship with Fatti’s and Moni’s since coming of age.)
So, the world came to a grinding halt when, mid-pandemic, my doctor told me that my body was gluten intolerant.
A glass of vino, a steaming bowl of pasta – with or without meat – that’s my winter vibe. Any meeting or get-together at an eatery has to be at a place that serves Italian food. Pasta is the Italian stallion that comforts my freezing bones and holds my tummy in a warm embrace. Throw a basil pesto in there and I’m all yours.
Oh, wait, I’m allergic to basil, too.
I know. I know. Even me. I’m considering having that lab audited. This is high-level allergy stuff. Like, whatever my body is going through should be called “your body just doesn’t want you to have nice things”. That would be an easier diagnosis to accept than “food intolerances”. I can tolerate the food, it’s my body that’s coming here with stories and excuses. (Good people, I am bland-food intolerant! It’s a thing, the medical field just isn’t acknowledging it.)
I have three mini-me’s who place their orders at Restaurant Mommy, and their set menu is all about noodles and pasta. But now their Queen of Mac ’n Cheese, the Lady of Lasagne, is a gluten-free shadow of her former self. I’m a chef who cannot even taste her own creations. What is this?
Listen, I go way back with my favourite comfort food to when my own mom would make me a creamy pasta with tuna. It was so good that I was hugely disappointed when I felt full. I didn’t want it to end – that deliciousness that makes your ears tingle and your toes curl up like they want to see for themselves what’s sending all these happy vibes throughout your body.
I am a miserable person in winter. Now there’s an intolerance. I’m not a fan of the cold, or the fashion that goes with it. Food was the drug that got me through. And now, here’s my body turning on me. Sure, I can walk away from toasted bread – that hanger-on following the soup everywhere. But pasta has always been a main event, a reason to tear myself away from my blankets and heater and show up at the dinner table. Now I’ve been doomed to face the cold with rice noodles and all those other condescending “but you really are still eating pasta” alternatives.
Recently, I thought a vegan friend had taken it a step too far when she introduced me to chickpea pasta. Oh, the sacrilege! She served me a small mound of pasta with fake cheese (okay, dairy-free cheese) melted over the top. Lemon zest, black pepper, olive oil. And … I found myself in a heaven I’d never given a chance before. The familiar warm internal embrace came back. Sure, it wasn’t quite the same druggy effect of flour, lifting me up and dropping me minutes later, but I was satisfied.
She pointed out, a little too proud of herself, that I hadn’t said a thing since my first bite. “I know you love the Italian accent – are you feeling it in the food?”
“Si!”
As for dessert. Babe, stamp your food passport, because momma came in the form of a polenta cake! My culinary angel knows my obsession with malva pudding, and so she hit me with a warmth that melted the heart of this hardened misser-of-all-fun-food. I lay there in a food coma, feeling the kind of joy and satisfaction I had resigned myself to never experiencing again.
“The Queen of Mac ’n Cheese, the Lady of Lasagne, is now a gluten-free shadow of her former self”