“Please tell me you remember how to do this.”
I glower at Xavier as he hovers around me. I don’t mind my younger brother being in the kitchen or even talking while I cook. I do mind it when he’s in my space. Even more so when I’m trying to make pasta from scratch. “I remember the basics. That should be enough.”
“The last time you made pasta, it was overcooked. The noodles were too tough.” Xavier frowns as I roll out the dough. “Oh, and did I forget to mention that your dough was too sticky? It was never right consistency.”
“Yeah, yeah, I remember.” A part of me wishes to shove the raw dough into his mouth to shut him up. He won’t let me forget about the pasta class we took last year. He cooked pasta like he’d been cooking it for years. My dough stuck, my pasta came out uneven, and my raviolis burst when put in boiling water. Since that day, I vowed I’d make perfect pasta. No, I’d make al dente pasta and Xavier would eat his words.
“It is ready yet?” He grumbles as I prepare the water for boiling. My noodles aren’t even, but it’s all right. Salting the water, I wait till it boils to put it in. “You know you don’t have to cook them for long, right? It’s not liked boxed pasta.”
“I know. They reminded us in the class.” My attention turns to thick red sauce bubbling on the side. Xavier’s never been a big fan of tomato sauce, but I was in no mood to experiment with something new. He’d deal with it. Once the bubbles formed in the pot, I put the noodles in. And there’s Xavier peering over my shoulder, breathing into my ear. “I’ll tell you when it’s ready!”
“Don’t undercook it either.” He swerves around to the other side and shakes his head at the thick red sauce. “This needs more oregano and sugar.”
“How would you know that? You didn’t try any of it.” I swirl the pasta around in the hot water. If he doesn’t stop soon, I’m shoving his face into the sauce. “I know what I’m doing. I’ve learned a lot since that class.”
“Did you put salt in?”
“You just saw me put salt in.”
“How about a few extra spices? Did you use the right tomatoes? Are you cooking the pasta too long?” Xavier darts back and forth as I remove one of the pasta noodles and check the firmness. It’s perfect. I dip my spoon into the sauce and lower the heat to a simmer. Of course, Xavier’s got something to say about that. “You can’t let that stay too long on the heat. It’ll lose all its flavor. It will…”
“There!” I fling the perfectly al dente noodle in his face. He steps back as I stir the rest of the noodles into the sauce. “It’s ready.”
INSTANT NOODLES 