Good food and good music both need timing, texture and soul. That was Louw’s takeaway.
Afrikaans rocker Jakkie Louw is more at home in front of a mic stand than a pasta machine. But he loves cooking and cranked out fresh pasta and learnt how to make an original Alfredo pasta in a single morning.
Scratch cooking is much like finding and treasuring original music. It’s mind candy and taste-bud love at first finger-lick.
Chef Noli, aka Manny Nichas of Pasta Barra in Brooklyn, Pretoria, taught. It took time, but that’s what slow food is all about. Louw was his usual, fun self and up for the challenge.
Nichas started with teaching the basics when making pasta from scratch.
“Half doppio zero flour for smoothness, half semolina for bite,” he said, and weighed out 100 grams of each. Into a well in the centre, 130 grams of egg went, mostly yolk for colour and richness.
“Too wet, more flour. Too dry, more egg,” he said.
Louw, more used to set lists than ingredient lists, watched as Nichas made the first fold of egg into flour.
“So this is like mixing a track, get the balance wrong and you have a flop.”
This is like mixing a track
Once mixed, it’s got to be kneaded. The fold-and-push motion while kneading the dough, Nichas explained, comes from the “Pasta Grannies” of Italy. Louw compared it to the way a song takes shape.
“You start rough, keep working it and eventually it flows.”
It is a sentiment that runs through his latest track, “Wie is Lief?”, which explores self-love and how people can work on themselves.
“It is not about ego,” he said. “It is about telling yourself you are worth something even if nobody else is saying it. I tell my daughters the same thing. You cannot give love if you do not start with yourself.”
Once kneaded, the dough is cooled for several hours. Then, it’s rolled out and straight to the pasta machine. Starting at the widest setting, Nichas narrowed the rollers over and over again until the sheets were thin enough to see a hand through.
“That is when you know it is ready,” he said. Louw likened it to creating a live show. “You open wide, bring it in tighter, keep the energy building.”
By the time the sheets stretched close to two metres, it was ready for the next step. The chop.
Cutting was a lesson in Italian gastronomic vocabulary.
“Pappardelle is thick ribbons for making ragu, for example,” said Nichas. “Fettuccine is thinner, for Alfredo. Linguine is thinner still,” Nichas said.
Louw chose fettuccine “because that is what I am eating in ten minutes,” he said while dusting the strands with flour.
Watch Jakkie Louw rock Pasta Barra
The sauce for the dish was as stripped-back as an MTV Unplugged session.
“The original fettuccine Alfredo has three ingredients,” Nichas said. “Fresh pasta, butter and Parmigiano Reggiano. No cream. The secret is pasta water; it binds the butter and cheese into a sauce.”
Louw shared that it was just like making, making Alfredo. “In music, sometimes you only need three chords and the truth.”
Cooking the pasta took less than a minute. It went straight from the salted water to the pan, where butter was melted in, along with grated cheese and a ladle of the starchy cooking water. Pepper was the final bit added. Simple.
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Between stirring and tasting, Louw spoke about The Three Little Pigs, a metal-inspired track told from the wolf’s perspective, and about why he enjoys turning a familiar story on its head.
“We do not talk about love enough, especially as men.”
He also returned to chinwagging about self-love, taking care of yourself, and your mental health.
“People think it is soft. But telling yourself you matter, or telling someone else they do, is the strongest thing you can do. It is like cooking; if you do not put the right things in, you cannot expect it to taste right.”
Good food and music need timing
Good food and good music both need timing, texture and soul. That was Louw’s takeaway. He said that if there was ever a pasta-themed song humming in the back of his mind, he’d write it, but on one proviso, that “Chef Noli plays the spoons,” Louw said.
