I moved from Italy to Uruguay almost three years ago. What nobody tells you about moving countries is that your kitchen habits are the last thing to change. You can swap your language, your commute, your timezone ( well, not by much, Italy and Uruguay are close ). But the way you cook? That stays.
Olive Oil Is Not Optional
In Uruguay, the default cooking fat is butter or sunflower oil. Sunflower oil. I am not making this up. You can find olive oil in any supermarket, but it sits next to fifteen varieties of sunflower oil like it is the weird cousin nobody talks to.
I brought a bottle of proper Italian extra virgin in my suitcase. Not because I could not buy it here ( you can, it is just not the same ). Because the first week without it I felt like I was cooking with water. Every dish tasted flat. Every sauteed vegetable missed something. That something was 0.8% acidity and a peppery finish.
Now I buy local olive oil from Mendoza ( Argentina, just across the river ). Good enough, accessible, and a fraction of the import price. But I still keep a small bottle of Italian EVO for finishing dishes. Some habits are not worth compromising on.
Pasta Water Goes In The Sauce
This is the one that starts arguments. Every time I cook pasta for Uruguayan friends, they watch me scoop cloudy water from the pot into the pan like I am performing a strange ritual. I am not. It is starch. It is emulsion. It is the difference between sauce that clings to pasta and sauce that slides off into a puddle at the bottom of your plate.
Save a cup of pasta water before you drain. Add it to your sauce a splash at a time while tossing. The starch thickens the sauce and binds it to the pasta. This is not opinion. This is chemistry.
In Montevideo, most people rinse their pasta after draining. I have seen it happen. I have tried to stop it. I cannot save everyone.
The Sunday Sauce
Uruguay has asado. Italy has ragu. Both take hours. Both are reasons to gather people around a table. I do both, depending on the crowd.
My ragu recipe has not changed since my nonna taught me. Onion, carrot, celery. Ground beef and pork mixed. A full bottle of red wine ( Uruguayan Tannat works perfectly, and it is poetic ). Two hours minimum on low heat. No shortcuts.
The ingredients swap is minimal. Carrots here taste the same. Celery is called apio and comes in smaller bunches. The wine is better and cheaper. Tannat adds this deep, almost chocolate-like richness that Sangiovese never had. I am not saying Uruguayan ragu is better than Italian ragu. I am just not saying it is worse.
Salt The Pasta Water Like The Sea
I have cooked pasta in six different countries. The mistake is always the same: not enough salt in the water. The water should taste like the sea. Not like a suggestion of salt. Like the actual ocean. Ten grams per liter minimum.
In Uruguay they sell coarse salt in every corner store. It is called sal gruesa. It costs basically nothing. There is no excuse.
What I Stopped Doing
Not everything survived the move. I gave up making fresh pasta every week. The humidity in Montevideo makes dough handling a nightmare in summer, and semola flour is harder to find. Now I do it once a month, in winter, when the dry air cooperates.
I also stopped insisting on specific pasta shapes for specific sauces. Carbonara must be spaghetti, ragu must be tagliatelle. In theory. In practice, when the supermercado only has penne rigate, penne rigate it is. Adaptation is not defeat.
I still make my own pesto though. The pre-made jars taste like regret and basil dust.
Conclusion
Moving countries does not change who you are in the kitchen. It changes what you can find and what you have to substitute. The techniques stay. The instincts stay. The salt-in-the-water stays. Everything else is a negotiation with whatever the local supermercado has on shelf.
Cook like you mean it, wherever you are. The pasta water does not care about your ZIP code.