Pavarotti, Puccini And Pasta Poem by B. V. Dahlen

Sometimes on Saturdays, I'm inspired to cook. I really enjoy listening to Italian opera, while I stuff our freezer with savory meals. Inserting a CD and adjusting the sound to a roaring delivery, I assemble my ingredients and utensils. There's just something about Verdi, Rossini, and Puccini that incites, in me, a marathon of Italian culinary fervor

I usually begin by placing two of my largest pots on the stove. These will soon be filled with Minestrone and Tomato Gravy.
Into both, I scatter some crumbled sweet Italian sausage meat, stirring with a large wooden spoon, until it is golden and aromatic. While the meat browns, I busily caramelize several bell peppers, onions, and cloves of garlic to a well-chopped mixture. I remove the sausage, and add the minced vegetables to both pans, with just a bit of olive oil.

After they blend, it's time to add the broth to one pot, and the minced tomatoes to the other. Now, the soup pot gets lots of chopped vegetables...corn, green beans, peas, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, and some rutabaga for a kick. Into the gravy pot goes tomato the puree. A large can of tomato paste, generously thinned with an ample portion of dry red wine is added to the mixture. Fresh basil, parsley, and oregano are minced, and added to both pots, along with salt and pepper. A dash of sugar mitigates the acid in the gravy. Half the sausage meat is returned to the Minestrone pot before both are covered and set to simmer on the back burners.

Now, as Mimi sings her aria in La Bohème, I grab two other stock-sized pots, fill both with salted water and set them to boil. Into the roiling liquid of one, I add large seashell pasta, and to the other, lasagna noodles. I lower the heat, and start mixing....tubs of creamy Ricotta, grated chewy Mozzarella and Provolone, pungent Romano and powdery grated Parmesan, with eggs and spinach.

When the pasta reaches the al dente point, it is drained and reserved in cold water. Then the assembly begins. Sausage meat is mixed with tomato gravy from the back burner, and ladled into waiting crockery baking pans. Lasagna noodles are layered with the blended cheeses. Seashells are filled with the same mixture. Each is sealed with a stretched Saran cover and set aside, lasagna on one side of the island and the stuffed shells on the other.

Now it's Rossini's turn, and the Barber of Seville propels me onward. I gather ground beef, veal, and pork, and blend it with still more minced peppers, onions, and garlic.
Spices, eggs, and breadcrumbs bind the mixture, before small meatballs are rolled quickly between my palms, and added to a large pan with a bit of olive oil beginning to sizzle around the edges. The meatballs are carefully turned to sear evenly, plucked one at a time, and dropped into the huge pot of simmering ruby tomato gravy. While the covered pots continue to stew, I collect my storage containers. Into this mass, I ladle portions of the soup, meatballs, and gravy. My husband is deputized to carry this bounty downstairs to the freezer, where they will wait in frosted darkness for some future feasts.

Above that treasure, in my spice-scented kitchen, I scrub pots, bowls and cutting boards, while Pavarotti sings 'Figaro'.