Italian pasta was created to cling to my hips. During my first month in Italy, I have eaten mouth-wateringly raw Florentine bistecca, a heavenly meringue dessert called semi-freddo, flavor-oozing grilled lamb, and miles and miles of unforgettable bruschette smothered in fresh tomatoes, just-picked basil, and moist mozzarella. Yet the primo piatti, the first course, usually consisting of pasta, is always what I, during that first chaotic week, and my happily plump hips, remember best.

The first week or so that I was here, I ate at a cozy little restaurant in Perugia called La Lanterna. Their dishes are mismatched, with different sets of silverware at each table setting, and the collection of knick-knacks decorating the restaurant are a distracted group of paintings, local hand-painted ceramics, and old relics you’d see in an antique store – they seem to follow the rule that if things are mismatched enough, they begin to match. Being the cheap college student that I am, I only ordered one course aside from the bruschette that my friends and I shared, and of course it was pasta.

The dish, Tagliatelle della Lanterna, was tagliatelle pasta with a happy medley of vegetables in creamy, white sauce, not too much that it overpowered the vegetables, but just enough to smooth over any rough edges of taste. There were diced zucchini and carrots, fresh tomatoes mixed in with lightness of the barely-there cream sauce, all working together to balance the heaviness of the pasta. Each bite melted my over-stressed body into a gooey mass of bliss. All my anxieties about being in a new city, new school, new country wobbled and disappeared, and instead was replaced with a goofy-relaxed euphoria that one can only get by eating orgasmic pasta.

My love affair with pasta started young. As mischievous little kids, my twin brother Michael and I had a fetish with dried pasta – we would sneak into my mother’s kitchen cupboards when she was in the bathroom, or outside in the garden, and would open the plastic bin that held the dry stalks of spaghetti noodles, and steal a handful each, giggling as we’d crunch away feverishly, frantically depleting my mother’s always-disappearing supply of pasta. While Michael still to this day enjoys the satisfying crunch of dried pasta, my taste for it has heightened dramatically – pasta al pesto, any kind of pesto, with any vegetable under the summer sun – torrid tomatoes, of course, grilled eggplant slices, diced zucchini, sweet red onion, fresh thyme or basil, and supple summer squash. Pasta with meat sauce – I once had a meat sauce made from every part of a rooster’s meat, organs, everything, and it was one of the most delicious meat sauces I’ve had with pasta – it was somewhat salty, with a kick of red pepper to keep things interesting. With my dish at La Lanterna, I found something simple, yet completely delicious, something mouth-watering that was not so pretentious that three-hundred sous-chefs and myself couldn’t create it. Rather, this pasta dish was something approachable, something conquerable, something inspiring. With the first taste of this pasta, I began to create similar dishes in my head, and during the following weeks, enthusiastically tried, tossing away the mistakes with a carefree attitude, and instead, trying new tactics and discovering a new, even better dish. Like the lonely student I was in a new place, my palate didn’t want to meet the famous and gorgeous, but possibly snobby Catherine Zeta Jones right now - no, I wanted the comfort of my boyfriend Todd, my family, or my best friend Megan, who are the most down-to-earth, loveable people I know. My palate wanted comfort, it wanted familiarity, within this first week. And while I have since been able to venture out and appreciate the famous flavor of Florentine bistecca just like I have been able to respect the genius of Michelangelo, I was glad to have my age-old friend, pasta, there to start my journey off! Together, we have and will continue to embark upon many a tasting adventures, conquering the famous, and surrendering to taste-bud bliss.