A Pasta Primer

Pasta is so omnipresent in our meal planning – 77% of Americans eat pasta at least once a week – that cooking pasta well should be second nature. Yet questions such as “should I oil the cooking water”, or “do I need to rinse the pasta after cooking” seem to frequently appear in cooking how to columns. The following is a pasta primer dealing with Western pasta; i.e. pasta made from flour and water.

Marco Polo did not bring pasta to the Western world. The first historical evidence of pasta in the West is, in fact, in Italy, in an Etruscan tomb dated about 1,000 B.C. Today, in roughly the same location – Parma - the Barilla factory produces 1,000 tons of pasta/day. It’s not a surprise that pasta is ancient; it really is a very simple food. Pasta, in its most simple form, is kneaded flour and water. There are relatively few variations. Eggs can be substituted for some of the water. Also providing some of the liquid can be a few traditional flavoring/coloring items such as tomato paste for a red color, cooked and chopped spinach for green, saffron for yellow, or squid ink for black.

Pasta comes in two forms – fresh and dried. Fresh pasta usually includes eggs while dried pasta is usually eggless - “egg noodles” being the primary exception. The best dried pasta is made from semolina. Semolina is coarse flour ground from durum wheat – most of which in grown in the Northern U.S. Durum wheat is a very “hard” wheat, i.e. it has a very high protein content which allows the pasta to keep its shape after cooking. When choosing boxed pasta, look for 100% semolina or durum wheat on the label. That is more indicative of quality than the country of origin, although Italian pasta is usually 100% semolina and American manufactured pasta can be a blend.

If you’re buying fresh pasta, or motivated to make your own pasta, don’t worry about using semolina. The eggs in fresh pasta add sufficient protein to all-purpose flour. Choose fresh pasta by its expiry date – the fresher the better.

There are hundreds of shapes of pasta; to choose which kind to use there are some rules of thumb. Thin, delicate pasta like angel hair is suitable for light, thin sauces such as oil and garlic. Thicker, straight pasta such as spaghetti or fettuccini is appropriate for heavier sauces, perhaps Alfredo or Pesto. Shaped pasta, or pasta with edges or holes like farfalle or macaroni, is good for chunky sauces. Generally, also, dried pasta goes best with tomato or oil based sauces, and fresh egg pasta works well with butter, cream, or cheese sauces.

Go To Page: 1 2 3