Tortellini has ended two of my relationships.

 

The double unravioling of my life is suspiciously coincidental. It would be a far more coincidental world if coincidences never happened, so this is just one that struck my way. In this universe I am the one who got dealt two tortellini breakups. Otherwise, it wasn’t serendipitous at all and I simply poisoned them. Alas for such easy answers, I didn’t even cook both times. Although on the second occasion I did refuse to eat.

 

I’ve concluded that tortellini must be a cause rather than an observer of relationship meltdown, and it is easy to see why. Tortellini for two as a home-cooked meal is the funeral of romance. Feeders beware. Preparing this filled pasta is like purchasing a cardboard coffin; it does the job, but we are unlikely to care about what’s inside.

 

Most supermarket chains push the boil-in-their-own-sack-of-skin pasta as the lowest price complete meal that looks unlikely to kill you from chemical bioaccumulation. In store, we look towards the price tag of the pasta only to be told to BOGOF. This rather aggressive marketing technique convinces us to walk off with not just one pack but two, sweeping our swearing tortellini down the aisle like a pair of brides being forced into bigamy. But I have been privy to the more elusive meaning of Buy one, get one free. Buy one, and one shall find oneself suddenly quite free. This was revealed itself to me with singular clarity. Singular because they made me single, and it could happen to you too.

 

Eaten with romantic company, the budget meal is suffered as an unspoken indictment that no one is even pretending to impress the other. Sometimes the suffering is so great that it can split the bond between you irreversibly. As I have been victim to twice. Hating repeating myself, I thought it best to unravel this mysterious coincidence before it went for thirds.

 

The first breakdown occurred in Italy. I had eloped with a virtual stranger to the home of our eponymous delicacy; where it is alleged that once a pasta-pioneer grabbed a piece, filled it up and ravelled its end to mimic the navel of Venus. Given the notorious pride of Greek deities, the Goddess of Love might not have been so pleased to have a highly replicable starch-cast of her belly button. And so, the lady said, let them get stuffed.

 

My Rome romance started by strafing every corner of the city’s culinary hotspots whilst most other countries suffered varying stages of covid confinement. We bled out our pandemic escape guilt via the viscous juice of a thousand pomodoros. Strangers initially glued together by lust, we made a smooth transition to gluttony when the former sin became less his thing. Any carnal desires devolved to straight carnivorousness. Whilst we got heavier, however, so did our moods.

 

A few months in, this once fun guy had clearly had his fill of me, and I discovered there wasn’t much room for negotiation. For our last supper, or lunch in this case, he pressed me to choose between eating at home or going out. His clearly articulated frustration at every mealymouthed decision I made eventually led to a resigned collapse into the local nonna’s homemade pasta counter. We bagged a sorry sack of tortellini and headed home.

 

Back in the kitchen, he scalded the skins of our pasta, enlisting the full wrath of his gas hob. I sat away from the flame and his boiling fury. One by one, each sorry sack rose to the surface with all the eagerness of a dead fish. He plated a few portions of the pasta to serve me first. To validate the ongoing silence, I started to eat, glad this was soon over. He saw me eat and started on me for starting before him. A flurry of slurs erupted. The next lump in my throat wasn’t from eating. He made a live volcano out of a pasta bowl, and I knew Rome had finally fallen.

 

Next up as if I didn’t been ‘tort’ enough, my pasta came back to haunt me. This involved a more protracted relationship, where if it had not been for the tied knots of some pasta, we might have tied the knot.

 

Soon into our relationship, I realised that a long-term form of role play would be necessary where food was concerned. I would be the unwilling culinary student previously unexposed to eating beyond bare survival; he was masterchef. Through a Gordon Ramsey ritualised slinging of insults, could I emerge from my trough triumphant? Would I have the guts to make it to the final?

 

Referring to himself as a supertaster, he pit himself in the league of three allies who shared his gift; a barrista, sommelier and chef respectively. I was privy to streams of adjectives unbeknownst to foodkind during devoted gastronomic sessions in coffee shops, wine bars, restaurants, and his own kitchen – that is, except when I was cooking.

 

Not fond of destructive criticism dressed in constructive clothing, I quickly shielded myself from ever making food with him. I ran but I couldn’t hide forever. One evening he warned me about his late return from work, so I offered to cook. No reply came, and I assumed he was being polite by silently declining. Earlier than anticipated, he was back, but on a call and stressed about work. After twenty minutes a resolution was found, and he thanked his mother. My greeting from him berated me for not having cooked. Tortellini is so simple, he said. It’s over in two minutes. Slightly longer for us actually, but not by much.

 

Out of the pits of Dante’s fridge, the remaining Sainsbury’s two-for-one pack was raised from its mediocre level of half-eaten hell. Heading for eternal damnation, tortellini dehumanised my competency to a level of instructions so simple that surely, I could fathom this. It read: rip, boil and serve. I uncertainly but successfully tore the packaging open. Next, however somewhere in that second word I stumbled. This I was let known by repeating cries of “You just lack common sense”. Defending myself felt even more demeaning. In a moment I finally reached the third stage, except I realised it was me who’d been served.

 

A post-data driven world tells us that if something is free, then you are the product. Following my experiences, I have determined that for every unpaid packet, tortellini feed disproportionately on our weaknesses. They exist dormant in their packaging, wrapped up in their own selves. But they await their final layer of hell, and that underbelly is you.

 

A meal is how we treat ourselves, and so others too. So next time you think about the laziest meal on the home-cooked menu, don’t bite off more than you can chew.

 

December 2023