Petit Pasta for Little Ones

About author / Amy Powell

World traveler; gourmet 30 minute meals; lover of exotic ingredients; winner on FoodTV's Chefs vs City; graduate French Culinary Institute. Her recipes will tantalize your taste buds.

I recently was handed down a dense and somewhat ancient book on the cooking of Tuscany. A lovely but largely unusable book, the recipes and accompanying pictures outlined feasts for every occasion. But even the simplest menu for a family dinner went far beyond the scope of American families' most elaborate holiday meals. Such was the complexity of the menus that many offered accompanying children's menus, perhaps recognizing that anchovy tarts and stuffed sardines are most likely not the thing to strike a child's fancy.

It was one of these children's meals that sent me on a trip back to my childhood food fantasies with the mention of one word: pastina. My nostrils and head filled instantly with the dizzying memory of my long forgotten favorite food. But who knew that others also shared in my love of this dish?! The tiniest bits of pasta are cooked in broth and folded in a coating of egg and cheese. Not even the pickiest of my siblings would refuse a steaming hot bowl of this comfort dinner.

Our recipes came from a one of those local cookbooks compiled from the home recipe collections of a women's group to which my mother belonged. Untested and vague, most of the contents of those sorts of cookbooks are bound to be overlooked, forgotten and later disposed of. But this book survived the years. I believe the only recipe we used was the one for pastina, but it made it through spills and tears and years of wear and love and abuse. It was our favorite recipe: a no fail, crowd-pleasing, kid-friendly recipe for pleasure in a bowl. First our mother made it; then later we kids gladly took up the spoon to stir, the cheese to grate, and the eggs to crack. Somewhere the recipe sheet may still exist in a folder, but we know it has lived on in the memory of our happy bellies.

In my world of fancy New York restaurants and gourmet quick cooking, I possibly would have forgotten my old friend Pastina, were it not for the mammoth Tuscan cookbook. In this cookbook, they cook the pin point size pasta in milk and finish it with parmesan cheese. I brought this to the attention of an Italian friend who informed me that he, too, ate a version of Pastina as a child. And I suppose that in some ways, pastina is not that different from a real (that means NOT from a blue box) macaroni and cheese dish, which almost every American kid adores.

So it is in these lazy winter months that the whiff of a memory conjured up from a dusty old cookbook can send me hurtling back to a simpler time. The memory of Pastina is apparently not one that I share alone, and one that is worth passing on to a new generation of picky whipper-snappers and petit gourmands in training.

Serves/Makes: 4

• 2 cups Acini de Pepe or smallest pasta available
• 4 1/2 cups chicken broth
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 1 cup grated Cheddar, Gruyere or other sharp cheese
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• salt and pepper