Carla Lalli on the Mother Sauce That Binds

Carla Lalli is a James Beard Award–winning cookbook author, producer, and video and podcast host. She was also previously the food director at Bon Appétit. Lalli’s latest book, Food Is a Feeling—a collection of recipes and personal essays written in the wake of her divorce—explores food as an emotional force in the human experience. Find an exclusive excerpt below.

When I was ten or eleven, there was nothing better than being asked what I wanted for dinner on Saturday night. The answer was Alfredo, and my mom was always willing to make it.

I remember sitting at the dinner table while my mom stood at the range and cooked, her back turned to the kitchen. My sister, Nina, was perched in her highchair. My parents ate after we did—at 9 p.m. or later—an entirely different meal my mom would prepare.

Alfredo is a one-pot dish. She’d stir the sauce together in the same pot she’d used to boil the pasta. Her Alfredo had three ingredients: unsalted butter, grated Parmigiano, and pasta water. No cream, no milk, no flour. She made it without measurements, adding splashes of pasta water and however much butter was needed to give her palmfuls of Parm something to melt into. It was pale-yellow, glossy, and almost sticky when it was done, nothing like the thick, milky pool of sauce I’d encounter when I went to Olive Garden with my grandparents for the first time.

Even though we ate in shifts, children and parents came together in the kitchen for Saturday dinner, which made the night feel as special as mom’s Alfredo. My parents worked late during the week; it was on the weekends that I got Carole’s food. I coveted fusilli. I loved the way the spirals stretched and bounced off the end of my fork, and how the sauce found its way into the loops. At the table, I added even more Parm and lots of black pepper, then prepared to defend my portion against the incoming dad attacks. Frank would arm himself with his own fork and circle us, then swoop in like a seagull.

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After the last of my fusilli had been stabbed and dragged through any sauce left in the bowl, I was off to watch the epic double-header of Love Boat and Fantasy Island. Starch, butter, cheese, love, fantasy: Saturday nights were peak living.

As a parent with my own young children, I, too, came home late on weeknights, after Leo and Cosmo had eaten dinner with their babysitter. I knew having a career was important and essential—good!—but not making their dinner felt like a fail. At the time, my working-mom friends all agreed that guilt was one of the defining emotions of motherhood. Meal planning was one way I tried to compensate and stay connected. Even if I wasn’t there for dinner, I’d have premade part of it on the weekend, or I’d decided what they should eat, made sure the shopping got done, and printed out recipes for our sitters. It was a conceptual link that I clung to.

Photo courtesy of Lucia Bell-Epstein

I cooked on the weekends—just like my mom did—and the four of us usually ate together, too. At some point on Saturday or Sunday afternoon, I’d extricate myself from kid duties to start cooking. I can hear myself telling little Leo that I couldn’t do Legos or play cards because Mommy’s hands are busy right now. It was the noblest of excuses; after all, we had to eat.

I shopped and cooked for my sons and my husband with consistency, kept them well, nourished them, tried hard to give them comfort and care. Even if I didn’t own it then, I retreated to the kitchen (and the supermarket) under the guise of providing and claimed that time for myself. I needed an outlet and a pursuit—we all do—and if I was cooking out of love, it meant I wouldn’t have another thing to feel bad about. It was both selfish and giving, and I wonder if it was the same for Carole as she made not one but two dinners on Saturday nights. Cooking was my free pass. Other spouses drop off the laundry, or weed the lawn, or go to the car wash and call friends on the drive.

Before the separation, I didn’t recognize that my instinct to cook was a need to create. As annoying as it was to unpack the groceries after shopping, transforming them into something we could eat was my biggest flex. My role in the kitchen gave me a sense of power and pride. I chose it, after all. Preparing food for others helped me connect with the creative satisfaction I get from turning food into meals, and it developed the skills that are how I earn my money. I still have some regrets about time, but I no longer carry guilt about what I was doing in the kitchen, alone.

My kids know Alfredo as “cheesy pasta,” but it’s the same thing. I favor De Cecco fusilli, the same brand Carole had in the pantry—the coils just feel right. My galley kitchen is open on one end, so anyone can watch me make it, but my back is turned when I’m at the range. Will my children remember what the back of my body looks like, the way I remember my mom’s? Maybe so. It is what it is. I have to watch what’s happening while I do the stirring and the splashing and the cheese-adding. If the butter starts to look greasy, that means the emulsion isn’t holding. Add more pasta water. If the sauce is runny, it needs more cheese. If the cheese starts to look stringy, there’s too much heat in the pot; pull it onto the counter to cool down. This is focused time.

Within a few minutes of stirring, the fat from the butter and the cheese should become one with the liquid you’ve added, and the ridges of the pasta will look like they’ve been dipped in sauce. That’s when you should taste it for salt and pepper. Go time. Yes, I had to leave the room to do this, but now I’m back, so get your asses in seats. I’ve got a big pot of pasta, and I can’t wait to hear you tell me that I make it the best.

Excerpted from Food Is a Feeling: Recipes and Stories, with Love by Carla Lalli. Copyright © 2026 by Carla Lalli. Photographs copyright © 2026 by Lucia Bell-Epstein. Published in the United States by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.