Pasta a risotto (Risotto-style Pasta)

One of the guilty pleasures that I have never, up to now, revealed to a living soul is my penchant for late-night pasta snacks. But not just any pasta, but pastina of the kind usually used for soups, cooked in just enough liquid (usually a mixture of water and milk) so that by the time the liquid has almost evaporated, the pasta if cooked and a creamy 'sauce' remains. I enrich the dish with a dab of butter and a spoonful of grated cheese just before pouring the concoction into a bowl and eating it greedily with a spoon.

I have always kept my love of this little mock baby-food to myself. After all, serious foodies do not indulge in such trifles, right? And, worse still, the method violates just about every traditional rule about the proper preparation of pasta. But then, not so long ago, while shopping for some new cookbooks in Rizzoli in New York, I stumbled across a book that a friend from Rome had heartily recommended to me, Cuochi si diventa by Milanese gastronome Allan Bay. As I leafed through the book, I found a chapter entitled "Mania dell'autore: la pasta a risotto" and, lo and behold, I found recipes for something very much like my late-night pastina…