‘Pasta Nada’ and More Ultrafast, Flexible Dinners

I’ve recently returned from spring break, where I scrounged a few quiet minutes to lie down poolside and devour “The Upstairs Delicatessen,” by Dwight Garner, a book critic here at The New York Times and a known eater of exceptional taste. The subtitle of this memoir: “On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading.”In the book, Dwight refers to “pasta nada,” which is what his father-in-law,…