Piacevole 02 – Penne Arrabbiata

It seems like a little time must have passed since the last episode since Morina appears to have settled into her job somewhat. The episode opens with Morina studying some information about the different cuts of meat which can be obtained from a pig. It seems that she’s trying to learn as much as she can about food preparation in order to do her job better.

We find out that Maro lives above the restaurant with his family, but his father the manager hasn’t been at the restaurant for two years. It’s speculated that he may be in Italy. The manager certainly must have good faith in his staff (or be a bad business person) to leave the staff to do their own thing for such a long stretch!

We meet Kirihide Konno, the head chef of the restaurant. He’s very serious about the food he prepares and gets upset when Morina accidentally splashes some tomato sauce on the floor. Maro offers to order in some special Pachino tomatoes to make up for it. He definitely seems to have a soft spot for Morina, demonstrated by his offering to teach her lots of things and the frequent blushing.

Konno is upset when the large order of Pachino tomatoes (tomatoes from the Pachino region in Italy) runs out, and Morina suggests that to cover the costs of getting more, they put more dishes on the menu featuring tomato. This is a very practical suggestion from a high school student who doesn’t have a lot of knowledge about running a restaurant or Italian cuisine, I’m not sure why one of the others didn’t make the suggestion first!

The dish that Morina learns about this week is penne arrabbiata. It’s a pasta dish with a spicy tomato-based sauce. The name translates to angry pasta, because of the heat from the chili. The sauce is heated constantly over a long period to give the onions a caramel colour. At Festa, the dish also has bay leaves, garlic, chili, and eggplant, though there seems to be some different variants. The use of the term pomodoro tomatoes appears to be a misnomer, as pomodoro is merely the Italian word for tomato, and doesn’t give any further information regarding the variety. It also seems to be the name for a time management technique, making searching for information about Italian tomatoes challenging! Konno mentions that good varieties of Italian tomatoes are sweet and not too watery, so they don’t have to add sugar to their dishes, unlike many Italian recipes I’ve tried with tomato where they do suggest adding a little sugar to cut through the acidity of the tomato in the dish. This is the sort of dish which would be possible to make at home, and as a fan of pasta, I may give this a go at some point in the near future. The basic ingredients aren’t too expensive or specialised where I live, although I don’t think I’ll get the fancy tomatoes, and just stick with locally available ones.

The show continues to have tasty food and great faces, together with a comfortable atmosphere with comic moments. If it continues in this vein, I’ll be quite happy!