Do It The Right Way
A lot of cultures have come up with a
way to combine flour with water and/or eggs to produce some form of
noodle or pasta. Italians certainly didn't invent the stuff, but can
there be any doubt that they are the masters of it? Italians have
elevated pasta to an art form. Spaghetti, linguine, fettuccine,
tagliatelle......the list is almost endless. There are more than 350
forms of pasta in Italy and about four times as many names for them.
That's because the same pasta shape can be called something different
in different parts of the country. According to Academia Barilla,
gnocchi is the forefather of all pasta; it evolved into other shapes
through the manipulation of the dough, either by hand or through the
use of simple tools, to produce local variations. And if Italians are
so proficient at making pasta, it stands to reason they are expert at
cooking it.
And yet, whether it's human nature in
general or American hubris in specific, a lot of people these days
keep coming up with ways to “improve” the process. “Use less
water,” they say, or “use cold water.” They're all over the
place about salt and time and they're constantly foisting off “pot
ready” pasta and “gluten-free” pasta and similar aberrations.
Fine. Whatever. You want to be an
innovator? Go for it. You want to create your own “superior method”
of doing something Italians have been doing for centuries? Be my
guest. But I'm here to tell you if you want good pasta, you've gotta
do it the right way and that's the traditional Italian way. With that
in mind, here are seven simple rules for making pasta like an
Italian.
Rule Number One: Boil It and Don't
Oil It
Ignore the heretics who tell you you
can get perfect pasta out of a shallow pan and two cups of cold water
or some such nonsense. Pasta needs lots of boiling water. Four to six
quarts. And boiling. Only boiling water will gelatinize the starches
in the pasta, making it tender and digestible. And keep the water
boiling from start to finish. If you turn it down to a simmer after
you've added the pasta, you'll wind up with mushy pasta.
Pasta needs room to swim. The reason
pasta sometimes sticks is because it gets too crowded to develop and
release those starches we were just talking about. Big pot, lots of
water. Somewhere, sometime, some well-meaning somebody who didn't
know the first thing about pasta decided that you could put oil in
the water to inhibit the sticking. Uh.......no. Basic science: what
happens when you mix oil and water? The oil separates and you get an
oily film floating on top of the water, right? Then you drag the
pasta up through it and all it gets you is oily pasta to which
nothing will stick, including whatever sauce you're putting on
it. Remember: Lots of water, boil it, and don't oil it.
Rule Number Two: Salt It
Salt
gets a really bad rep these days. As an essential nutrient for human
life and health, salt – or at least its sodium component – is a
vital electrolyte and osmotic solute. You simply can't eliminate salt
from your diet. However, since excessive salt consumption –
unfortunately common these days – can increase the risk of certain
cardiovascular diseases, it's usually a good idea to keep your intake
to a minimum. So when I tell you to add about three tablespoons of
salt to four or five quarts of water, you're likely to suffer a heart
attack just thinking about it. But it's true. È
vero. Italians will tell you the water should “taste like the
sea.” “Aaaarrrrghh!” you cry. “All that salt will kill me!”
But laboratory research has determined that the pasta being cooked
doesn't actually absorb that much of the salt: given three
tablespoons of salt to five quarts of water, the pasta only absorbs ½
to ¾ teaspoon of the salt. The
rest is discarded with the pasta water. So it's not really an issue.
What
is an issue in some circles is when to
salt the water. There's a great debate among the factions that say
add the salt to the cold water, add the salt to the boiling water,
and add the salt after the pasta is placed in the boiling water. And
the answer is.....there is no answer. The problem with adding salt to
cold water is that salt is corrosive and can eventually pit and
damage your cooking pot if it's left sitting on the bottom while the
water heats up. The problem with adding it after the pasta hits the
water is one of possibly uneven distribution. So most experts agree
that salting the water at the full boil and giving it a few seconds
to disperse before adding the pasta is the best way to go.
Why salt the water
at all? Because pasta has essentially no flavor of its own. And the
only opportunity you have to add flavor is through salting the water
because that's when the pasta is most susceptible to absorbing its
flavor. Salting pasta after it's cooked will give you nothing but
overly salty pasta. The noodles have already opened up, released
their starches, and set. You have to get the salt in there during
that cooking process or your window of flavoring opportunity closes.
One of my
restaurant cooks prepared a batch of spaghetti that was absolutely
bland and flavorless. I asked him how he had cooked it and he told me
“with a little salt in the water.” How much was “a little?”
About a teaspoon. In two-and-a-half gallons of water. “Throw it
out,” I told him, “We're starting over.” And he watched with
wide eyes as I dumped about a half-cup of salt into the fresh pot of
boiling water. “Taste that,” I told him. “What does it taste
like?” He replied, “Like salt water.” “Perfect,” I said.
“Remember that.” And when he tasted the finished product a few
minutes later, he enthused, “Wow! You can really tell the
difference. I'm going to make it that way at home from now on.”
Lesson learned.
Rule Number Three: Don't Break It
Don't ask for an
explanation of this rule, just accept it. It's an Italian thing and
it is what it is. I tell people all the time that Italians can hear
the screams of the poor pasta as it's brutally broken and tossed in a
pot. Actually, there is an explanation: long pasta is long for a
reason. Otherwise it would be short. The reason long pasta should be
left long is so that it catches and holds more sauce as you twirl it
around your fork. Of course, if you are one of the unfortunates who
cuts your spaghetti into bite-size pieces that can be scooped up with
a spoon, may I recommend “Spaghetti-Os” and respectfully suggest
you stay out of Italian homes for your own safety.
Rule Number Four: “Bite Me”
I don't know who
the whackadoodle was who first came up with the idea of testing the
doneness of pasta by throwing it at a wall and seeing if it sticks.
Maybe there was alcohol involved. Personally, I think such people
should themselves be thrown at a wall to see if they stick. The only
thing you'll get out of this ridiculous method is sticky, messy walls
and pasta that says “bite me.”
Perfect pasta should be cooked al
dente – literal translation:
“to the tooth.” What this means is that the cooked pasta
should be soft enough to bite into without feeling a crunch, but
still quite firm at the center. And the only way to test if something
is done “to the tooth” is to get your teeth involved. Take a
piece of pasta out of the water, blow on it to cool it a bit, and
take a bite. In the center of the pasta, you should be able to see a
thin core that is lighter in color than the surrounding outer layer.
That is called the “punto verde”, or “green point,”
and its presence indicates that the pasta is al dente. If
the pasta is crunchy throughout, it's undercooked. If it's the same
color and texture throughout and you don't see that “punto
verde,” the pasta is probably
overcooked.
Rule Number Five: No Rinsing, Please
Cooked pasta is covered with a light coating of the starch it
produces as it cooks. And some people erroneously believe there's
something healthy and desirable about rinsing away that starch. So
under the faucet the colander full of cooked pasta goes, and down the
sink goes the starchy coating that helps pasta hold on to the sauce.
There's really only one time when you want to rinse cooked pasta and
that would be if you are using the pasta in a cold application like a
pasta salad or something. Rinsing also stops the cooking process so
you're not throwing hot pasta in your cold salad. Otherwise, don't
rinse it. In fact, most experienced pasta cooks just lift the pasta
straight from the boiling water with a pasta fork or tongs. And
always remember to reserve about a cup of the cooking water. You'll
see why in a minute. Using a colander to drain pasta is okay if
that's your thing, but don't rinse the pasta and don't leave it
laying in the colander, either. Which leads us to the next rule.....
Rule Number Six: Cook It In The
Sauce
Somewhere Americans got the notion that
the proper way to prepare pasta was to cook the life out of it,
drain it dry, pile it on a plate, and dump a quart of runny red sauce
over the top of it. And nothing could be further from the truth. The
proper way to prepare pasta is to cook it until just a minute or so
shy of al dente, drain it
lightly, and immediately drop it into a pot or pan of simmering sauce
to finish cooking for the final minute or two. If the sauce seems a
little too thick, that's where the reserved cooking water I mentioned
before comes in. Mixing in just a fraction of a cup of this starchy,
salty goodness will “finish” your sauce like nothing else.
Preparing pasta this way allows it to fully absorb the flavor of the
sauce in a way that dumping the sauce on top will never achieve. The
pasta and the sauce marry and incorporate for a perfect – and
perfectly delicious – dish. You can't get the same results by using
your fork and mixing up the sauce on top with the pasta on the bottom
once it hits your plate. It just doesn't work. I know, I know –
that's probably the way your local “Italian” restaurant serves
it. And I'll tell you why: because that's the way Americans expect
it. For example, I advertised that the spaghetti served in my
restaurant was prepared “Italian style.” And wouldn't you know
there were a few people who complained that, because the sauce was
already mixed in, it looked “like yesterday's leftovers.” We
eventually found that if we cooked the spaghetti “our” way but
served it with an extra little dollop of sauce on top, people like
that would accept it. Several very Italian friends of mine serve
“American-style” spaghetti in their restaurants simply because
they have to. Of course, when serving me they lay out a plate of
properly prepared pasta because they know that I know the difference.
And now you do, too.
Rule Number Seven: Serve It Hot
There
is an oft-repeated Italian saying that goes, “pasta waits for no
one.” Cooked pasta is at its very best when it's fresh out of the
pan and piping hot. Italians drop everything
when
the call “è
tutto pronto”
is made. You'll never hear, “Okay. I'll be there in a minute.”
When dinner is ready, diners need to be ready, too; ready to sit down
and enjoy a plate of perfectly prepared pasta cooked in the
traditional Italian way.
Mangia
bene!
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