A Few Things Italian Cooks NEVER Do

Nearly everybody loves Italian food. Survey after survey shows it to be one of the world's most popular cuisines. Not only do people like to eat Italian food, they like to cook it, too, largely because of a basic tenet of Italian cooking: simplicity. Italian food is tasty and easy to prepare. What more could you want?

Italian food came to American shores in the hearts and souls – and occasionally in the luggage – of Italian immigrants in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. And it caught on like wildfire. Americans couldn't get enough of the stuff in neighborhood Italian restaurants. They wanted to be able to cook it at home, too. Italian cook Ettore Boiardi – the real life “Chef Boyardee” – got the ball rolling by packing up take out containers of his sauce for customers in his Cleveland eatery. Pretty soon, everybody in America was cooking like an Italian. Sort of.

Along the way, American cooks developed some horrible habits that make Italian cooks cringe. Unfortunately for the culture, Italians are, by and large, too polite to correct mistakes they observe in those trying to imitate them. Unlike the French, who spare no effort in reaming you a new one over the slightest infraction, the Italians have a “whatever” attitude toward everything from proper pronunciation of their language to correct preparation of their food. "You want to screw up our language by saying 'mare-uh-NARE-uh' and 'broo-SHET-uh' instead of 'mah-ree-NAH-rah' and 'broo-SKET-ah'? Whatever! You want to screw up our food by employing all manner of bad cooking techniques? That's okay, too. We're Italian. We don't mind."

Here are a few random things you will never see an Italian cook do.

Putting oil in pasta cooking water. I've been trying to find out how this awful habit got started and I just don't know. I even contacted the folks at the National Pasta Association. They don't know, either. It's just one of those things your mother told you to do because her mother told her to do it that way. Unless your mother was Italian. Putting oil in the water is one of the things you will never see an Italian cook do.

The theory behind the silly practice is that adding oil to the cooking water will magically keep the pasta from sticking together. But think back to Chemistry 101. What happens when you pour oil on water You get water with a film of oil on top. The only thing you need to pour into pasta cooking water to prevent sticking is more water. You need at least a gallon of water to cook a pound of pasta. If you try to dump a whole box of spaghetti into a two-quart saucepan half full of water, it's gonna stick. Pasta releases starch as it cooks. That's what gets sticky. The oil you pour on top just floats around up there and never gets down to where the stickiness happens. And by the time you pull the cooked pasta up through the layer of floating oil, the stickiness has already happened. And, no, stirring it in doesn't help. Unless you really stir it in enough to create an emulsion, the oil is just going to drift lazily back to the surface as soon as you take your spoon out of the pot. If you have enough water for the pasta to swim around in, the starch disperses and the noodles don't stick. No oil needed.

Some people say the oil helps prevent boil overs, and there is something to that. But I've got an even better, more foolproof way to prevent boil overs: lower the heat and watch the pot! That's how an Italian cook does it.

Cooking pasta without salt. Salt has become the universal culinary villain in recent years. To listen to the “experts,” you'd think that everybody who even looks at the stuff risks dropping dead of a stroke or a heart attack. But you know what? There are some foods that just absolutely need salt. Eggs, for instance. There is nothing worse than an unsalted egg. Pasta is the same way. In and of itself, it is fairly bland and flavorless. I mean, dried pasta is made of flour and water, okay? How much flavor can it have? So you have to salt it to make it taste like anything and the salting has to be done during the cooking process. In order for it to taste right, it has to be cooked in – as Mario Batali puts it – aggressively salted water. An Italian cook would never use less than one or two tablespoons of salt per gallon of water. The salty flavor is absorbed into the pasta as it swells during cooking. A long-time chef of my acquaintance suggests that cooking pasta in unsalted water actually leeches what little flavor there is out of the pasta, leaving it even more dull and bland. The salt also helps reduce the gelation of the starch released by the pasta. And, no, it won't give you an instant heart attack because the pasta will only absorb so much salt. The rest is drained away. If you wait until after the pasta is cooked, you can dump salt on it to little avail. There is no substitute for salting the water.

Rinsing cooked pasta. Another thing everybody's non-Italian mother taught them to do was to rinse the cooked pasta. “It gets all that starch off there.” No, no,no! You want all that starch on there. It's what helps the sauce adhere to the noodle. If you're ever served a nice big bowl of pasta where the noodles are bright white and naked and sitting in a pool of sauce, you can bet somebody listened to his non-Italian mother and rinsed the pasta. An Italian mother would never think of rinsing the pasta, so it's another thing an Italian cook would never do.

Oiling cooked pasta. Same thing goes for oiling the pasta after you cook and drain it. Like rinsing, you would only do that in a pasta salad or some other application where you don't want anything to stick to the pasta. Otherwise, you're gonna make that pasta as slick as a bambino's bottom and all the work you put into opening that jar of spaghetti sauce will be wasted because it'll just slide right off the noodle and back onto the plate. Or onto the front of your shirt. So, okay, I can't say Italian cooks never oil pasta, but they only do it in specific instances. Never for spaghetti or fettuccine or linguine or anything you serve hot with sauce.

Breaking up uncooked pasta. Don't break the pasta. What did it ever do to you? The Italian ear is very sensitive to the screams of spaghetti noodles as they're being viciously and cruelly snapped in half before being tossed into a pot of oily water. If you don't like or want long pasta, don't buy long pasta! Italians are artists at twirling up long strands of pasta on a fork and if you ask one, he'll be happy to show you how to do it without staining your shirtfront or resorting to breaking the noodles into bite-size pieces that you could eat with a spoon. An Italian cook never breaks up the pasta.

Overcooking pasta. I'll let you in on a little secret: In spite of what you get in a can of Chef Boyardee's eponymous product, pasta is not intended to be soft and mushy. The perfect pasta is cooked to a perfect chewy firmness – something Italians call al dente. Al Dente is not the name of the Italian guy who lives down the street, and for heaven's sake, it's not al DANTE. No doubt Dante was a great Italian poet, but his name has nothing to do with the proper texture of pasta. He may have, however, reserved a ring in hell for people who overcook it, something an Italian cook simply never does.

Cooking with “cooking wine.” Cooking with wine is very common in Italian cuisine. What is not common is so-called “cooking wine.” You've seen it in supermarkets. It's usually labeled “Italian Red Cooking Wine” or “White Italian Cooking Wine” or some such. Don't be fooled. An Italian cook would never cook with this stuff. It barely qualifies as wine, being made from the cheapest, thinnest base wine to which a ton of salt, colorings, and other substances have been added to make it resemble wine. Rule of thumb: never cook with a wine you wouldn't drink. And believe me, you wouldn't want to drink “cooking wine.”

There are numerous other things Italian cooks don't do. Popular notions to the contrary, they don't cook with egregious amounts of garlic and they don't serve everything swimming in seas of red sauce. And they don't put twenty toppings on a pizza. These are all stereotypes and adulterations brought about by years of misinformation coupled with the inherent Italian inability to say, “No! Che non è giusto!”

So, forget what your mother taught you. Stop oiling, rinsing, breaking, overcooking, over-saucing and all the other things an Italian cook would never do. You will be amazed at the difference and your home-cooked Italian food will start looking and tasting like the delicious food you love at your favorite authentic Italian restaurant. (Olive Garden and Pizza Hut don't qualify.) Take some classes, get some books, interact with some real Italian cooks. If nothing else, watch Mario and Giada and Lidia and Mary Ann on TV. Cook and enjoy beautiful, simple Italian food the way it was meant to be cooked and enjoyed. Those are things Italian cooks always do.

Lorena Garcia's Dangerously Stupid Taco Bell Commercial

I know for a fact they teach knife safety at Johnson & Wales University. I guess Lorena Garcia was absent that day.

The latest Taco Bell TV spot featuring the “Top Chef” contestant is a travesty. Of course, I think Taco Bell is a travesty in and of itself. And how the addition of a paralegal from Venezuela who now cooks Latin cuisine in Miami is supposed to convince us that the fare at the Yum! Brands faux-Mexican franchise has suddenly gone “gourmet” is a stretch of a whole different fabric. But I digress.

The newest ad for the Cantina Double Steak Quesadilla is a nightmare to watch for anybody with the most rudimentary scrap of culinary training. I am frankly shocked that Garcia would allow herself to be so poorly used. The commercial was totally ineffective for me because I was so transfixed on Garcia's flagrant transgression of basic kitchen safety that I completely missed the product for which she was shilling and had to look it up in order to write this piece.

In case you don't know what I'm babbling on about, you can see it here: http://www.ispot.tv/ad/7tpo/taco-bell-cantina-double-steak-quesadilla-waving-knife

The spot features “Chef” Garcia standing in the midst of a group of decidedly nervous-looking cooks discussing her newest creation for Taco Bell. The cooks are nervous because Garcia is standing there waving around a 10-inch chef's knife like a conductor's baton. She gestures with it here and pokes with it there and points with it somewhere else. And the obvious consternation of her fellow cooks is apparently supposed to be hilariously funny.

The first rule of knife safety posted by the National Food Service Management Institute at the University of Mississippi is, “Concentrate on what you’re doing when using a knife. Do not engage in conversation when using knives; pay attention to the task underway.” Even the greenest culinary student can tell you that when you are not cutting something, your knife should be resting on your board with the sharp side of the blade turned away from you. You don't walk around with knives, you don't run around with knives, and you sure as hell don't stick them in people's faces. The idiots who write TV ads might think it's funny, but kitchen professionals will not. And here I thought Lorena Garcia was a professional.

Worse still, kids watch these things. I can't wait for the first lawsuit to be filed after some kid whacks another kid's ear off emulating the reckless actions of Lorena Garcia. “Gee, Mom. It looked funny when that lady chef did it on TV.”

Bad move, Taco Bell. Might want to rethink your relationship with whatever agency sold you this one. And Lorena........you should be ashamed. I'm sure your instructors at Johnson & Wales are. Sacrificing your integrity as a professional chef for the sake of a poorly-conceived fast food television commercial is pretty low class. If Taco Bell is just going to dress you up as a clown to sell their mediocre crap, you might want to do some rethinking, too.

This ad needs to be pulled quickly before something other than Lorena Garcia's image gets hurt.

UPDATE: I don't know if there was a general "backlash" regarding this moronic commercial or not, but it disappeared very quickly and quietly. Many of my readers were horrified enough to comment on it. I'm sure the suits at Yum! got an earful, too. One hopes it will preclude anything this foolish from airing again.

UPDATE: Paula Deen and “The N-Word”

Food Network Leads the Pink Slip Parade for the Controversial “Butter Queen”

Pity poor Paula Deen. She's stepped in it again. But this time it keeps getting deeper.

After being castigated by nearly everyone with access to a computer keyboard – including yours truly – for her disingenuous faux pas of hiding her diabetes diagnosis until a drug company made its revelation profitable for her, all the while shoveling pounds of butter and sugar down the gullible throats of her teeming fan base, the “Butter Queen” reinvented herself by slimming down a bit and adopting a pseudo-healthy approach to her signature Southern cuisine. Of course, that includes fronting a line of flavored “finishing butters” that her sycophantic legions could purchase at Walmart, but that's beside the point.

Now the very same media that raised a nondescript, dumpy, middle-aged Georgia home cook from a seller of bag lunches on the streets of Savannah to the Olympian heights of international culinary superstardom is threatening to bring her back down by branding her with the scarlet “R” of racism.

While defending a discrimination lawsuit brought against her and her brother, “Bubba,” by a former employee who surely knows a rich target when she sees one, Mrs. Michael Groover, aka Paula Deen, admitted to having uttered the infamous “N-word.”

Initially, Paula admitted to using the word a time or two in her life. But she says that was a long time ago and she doesn't do it anymore and she doesn't condone its use and nobody she associates with condones its use and she's all about equality and opportunity and love and acceptance and blah-blah-blah. And you know what? That facade drops the minute the cameras and microphones turn off. I guarantee when Mrs. Groover goes home and closes the bedroom door and talks to Mr. Groover, she ain't a-callin' her dark-skinned neighbors “African-Americans.” She's of an age and from a place and a culture where calling blacks “niggers” is as natural as calling your mother “Mama.”

Believe it or not, the sentence you just read was enough to get this article refused by the Yahoo! Contributor Network on the basis of "offensive language." Have we reached the point where we can't even talk about the subject of being offensive without being offensive? 

Anyway, an elderly gentleman of my acquaintance is a decade or so older than Paula and from even deeper in the Deep South. And he makes me cringe every time he opens his mouth. Whenever he sees a black person walking down the street, whenever he encounters a black waitress, nurse, store clerk, or whatever, whenever he sees a black actor, entertainer, or athlete on TV, it's always “that nigger.” And you can't change him. You can't correct him. You can't say, “Don't you know that's wrong?” He won't hear it. He gets angry and defensive if you even try. And yet if you accuse him of being a racist, he is utterly astonished. “I ain't no racist. I just don't like niggers.” He is mentally, psychologically and socially incapable of making the connection.

 At first, I thought Paula was smarter than that. I figured that she understood that you can't go around doing politically incorrect things in an increasingly politically correct world without being held accountable for it. So, Paula Deen, the celebrity cook, the Food Network star, the face of an incredibly lucrative franchise probably doesn't use or condone public use of the "N-word." But Mrs. Michael Groover, born and raised in the Jim Crow South? I'll bet she uses a lot of politically incorrect words when the spotlight goes out.

That's the problem with celebrity. Living up to the expectations of millions of adoring people who think you are perfect is a difficult cross to bear. You're going to slip, you're going to stumble, the facade is going to crack and expose the “you” underneath. And the media is a fickle bitch. It is both Brahma and Shiva. It creates fame and destroys it with equal alacrity. And when the “you” that is exposed has warts or flaws, the facade crumbles, aided and abetted by the sharp pickaxes of a scandal-hungry press.

And boy howdy, has it cost Paula a bundle. Her principal employer, Food Network, after “monitoring” her current crisis of character, decided to pull the plug on their controversial creation, saying, “Food Network will not renew Paula Deen's contract when it expires at the end of this month.” The announcement came on the heels of a pair of poorly conceived Internet video “apologies” issued by the Deen camp, in which Paula begs for forgiveness from her family and fans, saying, "Your color of your skin, your religion, your sexual preference does not matter to me." Deen continues, “I want people to understand that my family and I are not the kind of people that the press is wanting to say we are." And later, "The pain has been tremendous that I have caused to myself and to others."

The weirdness of the YouTube videos and their vaguely non-apologetic character just added fuel to the fire as did Paula's terribly ill-advised last minute bailout on a scheduled "Today" show interview.

And then the dominoes started to fall. For days it became a kind of morbid sport to log on and see who dropped Paula today. Food Network led the pink slip parade and was quickly followed by Smithfield. Then Walmart pulled the plug, leading to similar measures by Home Depot and Target. Ceasar's Entertainment stripped her brand from four of their restaurants. Even the rats at drug maker Novo Nordisk --the company that drilled the first holes in the bottom of her boat -- abandoned ship. QVC, Kohl's, Macy's, and Sears were all "evaluating" or "reviewing" their relationships.

While it's unlikely Mrs. Groover will be back selling bag lunches any time soon, her empire has fallen in a way that would astonish ancient Rome.  

As you may have determined, I am not a fan of Paula Deen. I've seen her on TV and I've seen her in person, and, frankly, I've seen enough. My biggest complaint is that she comes off looking as fake and as plastic as her fellow Food Network “star”, Sandra Lee. I live in the South. My sister married into a Southern family. My wife was born and raised in the Deep South. Most of my friends and associates are from the South. And we all agree on one thing: Paula Deen is too Southern to be real. If Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee were to watch her on TV, they would both say, “Damn, girl. Tone it down a little.” She's like that annoying relative who can't complete a three-sentence thought without saying “you know” eighteen times. Except in her case it's “y'all.” If y'all are reading this in some locale other than the South, y'all need to understand that y'all would never hear “y'all” spoken by anybody y'all might meet in the South as often as y'all would hear it said by Paula Deen, y'all. Curiously, she managed to muddle her way through her string of mea culpas -- which actually came off as more mea NON culpas -- without uttering a single "y'all." She is a caricature.

But is she a racist? Probably not. At least not in the most repugnant sense. The dictionary definition of “racism” describes “a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others.” I don't think Paula wants to rule anybody and I don't think she believes herself to be superior. Like most people in the contemporary South, she has educated and elevated herself beyond such reprehensible and primitive thinking. But she is still the product of a culture that openly promoted such ideas when her morals and attitudes were being formed and she's probably going to revert to that upbringing from time to time until the day she dies. Does that mean that she launders sheets for the Ku Klux Klan in with the table linens from The Lady and Sons? Of course not. But the fact that she even elucidated a thought about a scenario involving a “plantation-style wedding” in which “a bunch of little niggers” would wear white shirts and black shorts and bow ties and dance around like they did in the Shirley Temple movies proves that she is still capable of reverting to that unenlightened upbringing. And yet she remains puzzled by it all. “I can't, myself, determine what offends another person.”

Honey, you offended a bunch of other people by ending your crocodile tear-stained interview with Matt Lauer by openly and defiantly saying, "I'm not gonna change." And reverting to stereotypical black dialect with, "I is what I is" was a nice touch, too. Way to convince the fence sitters, girl.

The South has changed in the last fifty years. It has evolved and it continues to do so. But some people of Paula's generation are at the tail end of that evolutionary process. They won't completely evolve until they are completely dead. Even so – and I can't believe I'm saying this – give her a little slack. If you want to criticize her for being a fake or a fraud or a hypocrite or a caricature, go for it. But I think “racist” is a little overblown. I might give you “classless, ignorant, backward redneck,” but not “racist.”

Do you know what a “sweven” is? Probably not. It's an archaic word for a dream. It's been out of use for centuries. Friends, I have a sweven of a day in which “the N-word” and all the controversy surrounding it will be archaic and out of use, as well. Unfortunately, I don't think it will come true in my lifetime. Or in Paula Deen's.

Making Processed Food LOOK More Natural

These days, “natural” food is cropping up everywhere. Some of it actually is natural and some of it is just lipstick on a pig – almost literally.

The purveyors of processed food products are pretty adept at riding the latest waves of popularity and there's little doubt that “natural” is at the crest of the current wave. But when average consumers look at a package of, let's say, sandwich meat in the grocery store and see perfectly round, perfectly thin slices of ham or beef or chicken or turkey all neatly and uniformly stacked in shrink-wrapped plastic packages, they're not thinking, “Oh! That looks natural.”

Once upon a time, “modern” shoppers wanted food that looked “modern.” They liked the uniformity, because it said “this is neat and clean and perfect.” But the new “modern” shopper eschews the obviously processed and wants things a little more rustic, a little less formed and molded, a little more “natural.” And so the food processors have set out to give the customer what he or she wants: food that looks natural. Not that it's any less processed or any more “natural” than it was before, but, by golly, it sure looks that way.

In fact, Kraft Foods -- the company behind Oscar Mayer products – has spent years of time and tons of money developing – get this – specialized equipment designed to make processed food look natural by cutting it unevenly. They've got whole teams of people analyzing the way dads hack up turkeys at Thanksgiving and then creating machines to replicate that hacking in order to produce a more “natural” look. They even paint the edges of the slices with caramel coloring to make them look more like something that was carved right off a freshly roasted bird. Never mind that certain caramel colorings were recently determined to be carcinogenic. They just look so darn natural!

They say you eat with your eyes. I tried that and found it extremely messy. I prefer to eat with my

mouth and use my eyes to read labels. For instance, Oscar Mayer's Carving Board Oven Roasted Turkey Breast looks really natural. Right down to the turkey breast, water, cultured corn sugar, less than 2% of salt, sugar, vinegar, sodium phosphates, sodium ascorbate, sodium nitrite, and caramel color that you'll find in those “naturally carved” slices.

Or, you want natural? How about Oscar Mayer's “Natural” Oven Roasted Turkey, containing turkey breast, water, less than 2% of potassium lactate, (from corn), sea salt, evaporated, cane juice, carrageenan, celery powder, lactic acid, and starter culture. Carrageenan, in case you were wondering, is a gelling agent derived from red seaweed. It's considered safe in small quantities, but I don't know about “natural.” And what's a “starter culture? It's a bacterial culture used in cured meats to help develop color, flavor, and aroma. Just screams “natural” to me.

Of course, when compared with Oscar Mayer's plain old unnatural Oven Roasted Deli Turkey and its chemistry lab of turkey breast, water, modified cornstarch, less than 2% of sodium lactate, salt, sugar, sodium phosphate, sodium diacetate, sodium erythorbate, (made from sugar), sodium nitrite, and caramel color, I guess the “natural” stuff looks pretty natural at that.

I'm not just riding OM. Hillshire Farm Deli Select Smoked Ham has water, less than 2% of salt, sodium lactate, dextrose, sodium phosphate, sodium diacetate, sodium ascorbate, vitamin C, and sodium nitrite, and Healthy Choice loads up its Oven Roasted Chicken Breast with potassium lactate, modified food starch, salt, corn syrup, sodium phosphate, and sodium diacetate.

The point I'm belaboring is this; don't be taken in by buzzwords and marketing ploys. Currently, neither the FDA or the USDA has any rules regarding the use of the word “natural” in food labeling, although the FDA does actively discourage it. But there are no legal standards – or legal consequences – so manufacturers can slap the word on anything their greedy, market-driven little hearts desire. And since they know that the American sheeple are flocking to “natural” things these days, they're gonna do their darnedest to fleece them by any means necessary, including engineering processed food to look more “natural.”

If you are cooking at home with fresh, wholesome ingredients that you prepared yourself, then by all means make it look as good and as appetizing and as tantalizing as possible so that people will, indeed, enjoy the sight and eat with their eyes. But when it comes to prepackaged processed food products, don't let your eyes deceive you.

Buying Quality Dried Pasta – There IS a Difference

One of the more egregious falsehoods ever foisted off on unsuspecting cooks is this: “pasta is pasta.” Nothing could be further from the truth. To clarify, I'm talking about dried pasta, or pasta secca, as opposed to pasta fresca, or fresh pasta. There is a world of difference between fresh pasta and dried, but that's a discussion for another time.

I was once called upon by a friend to help prepare a “spaghetti dinner.” Everything was provided; all I had to do was cook. So I started about five quarts of water boiling. “You sure use a lot more water than I do.” Then I added a couple of tablespoons of salt to the water. “Oh, my God! That's too much salt!” My hostess/helper questioned the fact that I did not add oil to the pasta water (“It's gonna stick!”) and was rather shocked when I yelled at her just as she was about to break the pasta in half. Okay, so now I understood the source of half of her cooking problems. Then I got a look at the pasta itself; it was the best two-for-a-dollar, no-name-brand spaghetti money could buy. “That's what we always use. Spaghetti is spaghetti.” There was the other half.

I knew what was going to happen and it did. I put the spaghetti in the gallon-plus of well-salted, unoiled water, gave it a quick stir, and let it cook for about eight minutes. I tested it. Not even close. So I let it go another two minutes. Still not al dente. I checked it every minute for four or five minutes more, and suddenly it turned to mush. I was upset with myself for overcooking the spaghetti, but my friend was nonplussed by my frustration. “That's the way we always have it. What's wrong with it?” Uffa!

When it comes to taste, pasta is pretty much pasta. Only a really refined palate can detect an appreciable difference in the taste of properly prepared pastas. And even that subtle difference disappears when sauce is applied. No, the real differences in pasta are related to body and texture.

Good quality dried pasta is made from two ingredients; water and durum semolina. Durum is a type of hard wheat and semolina refers to a milling process that produces a texture like very fine sand rather than soft powder. Producers of cheap, off-brand dried pastas often add regular flour to the mix as an extender. Some cheap pastas are made entirely of common wheat flour, a manufacturing practice that is actually illegal in Italy, although a sub-class of lower grade pasta made there may contain up to three percent soft-wheat flour, but must be labeled accordingly.

Unlike the fresh pasta you whip up at home, producing quality dry pasta is a fairly painstaking process. Semolina flour is piped into a mixing machine. Water is added. The standard moisture content in the dough stage is about thirty percent. The mixture is mechanically kneaded until firm and somewhat dry, then it is pressed into sheets. It then goes to a vacuum machine that removes any air bubbles and further reduces the moisture content to a target level of about eleven or twelve percent. The pasta is steamed to kill any potential bacteria that may have accumulated, then it is sent off to be cut or extruded. Finally, the finished product is dried under very specific conditions related to the type of pasta.

Here's what to look for in a good quality dried pasta:

Ingredients – The only ingredient should be durum semolina (or sometimes semolina durum) wheat. The label will also display the mandatory enriching ingredients niacin, iron, thiamine, riboflavin, and folic acid. There should be no other chemicals or preservatives or additives.

Color – Good pasta should be a uniform amber yellow to rich cream color. Pale, pasty pasta probably contains additives and extenders.

Appearance and texture – High quality dried pasta will have a slightly rough surface texture. This helps sauces adhere to the cooked noodles. When held up to the light, there should be no dark or light spots evident. Some pastas will have slight ridges caused by extrusion and that's okay, as long as the ridges are uniform. Uneven, bumpy, spotty pasta is a sign of either adulteration or poor manufacturing – or both.

Taste and aroma – Good pasta should not have an aroma or odor of any kind. If it does, it's probably rancid due to the age and quality of the ingredients and/or to unhygienic manufacturing or drying processes. And although there should be no obvious taste for the same reasons, good pasta will have a slight sweetness when raw.

Clean fracture – Good pasta will break cleanly with a distinct, crisp snap. Cheaply made pasta will fracture unevenly with a lot of bits and slivers and may also exhibit air bubbles when examined closely.

If you have fallen for the “pasta is pasta” line, here's where you're going wrong. Quality pasta made from premium ingredients is manufactured to maintain a certain consistency when cooked. There is a complicated chemical balance of starch and gluten that must be maintained in order for the cooked pasta to come out soft and spongy but still firm and well-formed. As I said, the dance between the starches that absorb water and swell up and the proteins or glutens that coagulate and hold the pasta together is very complex. But it's the reason that good quality pasta is so far superior to the cheap stuff.

Pasta made with cheap ingredients and inferior techniques often contains uneven particles in the dough. Particles that are too small make for soggy dough while particles that are too large absorb too much water and compromise the structure. Pasta made with soft flour and extenders tends to shed too much starch, turning the cooking water a milky white and making that desired soft-but-firm texture almost impossible to achieve. Because the starch component overwhelms the protein element in the cooking process, the pasta remains rigid until it turns to mush.

So what's a good pasta to buy? Open question. There are hundreds of brands on store shelves at varying price points. As a rule, I prefer De Cecco or Barilla. While Barilla is Italy's largest producer of pasta, the Barilla pasta you buy at your neighborhood store is actually produced in the United States. Nothing wrong with that, but De Cecco products are all manufactured in Italy. Other Italian sounding names like “Ronzoni” are also made in America, although Ronzoni holds up fairly well by comparison. Same goes for Da Vinci products, most of which are produced in Italy with a few lines (lasagne and jumbo shells, for instance) coming out of American factories. Generally speaking, you can rely on the name brands for consistent quality. That said, specialty shops and Italian markets are overflowing with “product of Italy” labels that you've probably never heard of. Just keep in mind the five quality points outlined above and you'll be fine.

The owner of a little Italian place I used to frequent was amazed the first time I complimented him on the beautifully textured quality of his pasta. Turns out it was custom made and I was the only one who had ever commented on it. Conversely, the waiter at an Olive Garden was not surprised when I told him that the pasta was bland and overcooked and had probably come prepackaged. “Yeah,” he admitted, “People like you can always tell.”

“Pasta is pasta?” Don't you believe it.

Recipe: “Red Lobster-like” Garlic Cheddar Biscuits

Red Lobster's “Cheddar Bay Biscuits” are always a huge hit with restaurant patrons. So much so that they've produced a prepackaged mix that you can buy to make your own. But don't bother. The recipe below will produce biscuits just like the ones you get at Red Lobster for a fraction of the cost of the store-bought mix.

We do a lot of catering for office parties, birthday celebrations, wedding receptions, and the like. So we're always on the lookout for great, simple party food. These biscuits fill the bill perfectly, especially when you “mini-size” them.

This is a basic drop biscuit recipe. If you use an ice cream scoop and make them full-size, you'll get about a dozen biscuits. If you use a rounded tablespoon or a mini-scoop, you'll get 3 ½ to 4 dozen.

“Red Lobster-like” Garlic Cheddar Biscuits

For the biscuits:
2 1/2 cups baking mix (we prefer Jiffy, but Bisquick works)
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 cup cold whole milk
4 tablespoons cold butter

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1 heaping cup grated mild or sharp cheddar cheese

 

To top:

4 tablespoons butter, melted
1/4 teaspoon dried parsley flakes
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
Pinch kosher salt

Preheat oven to 400°.

In a large bowl, combine the baking mix and baking powder with cold butter. You can use a pastry cutter, a wooden spoon, or your hands, but don't over mix. You should wind up with pea-size chunks of butter in the mix. Add cheddar cheese, milk, and 1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder. Continue mixing until everything is combined into a shaggy mass of dough. Again, don't over mix.

Using an ice cream scoop (for full-size) or a rounded tablespoon or mini-scoop (for mini-size), drop portions of the dough onto a baking sheet lined with a silpat or parchment paper. Bake full-size biscuits for 15 to 17 minutes or minis for 10 to 12 minutes or until the tops of the biscuits begin to turn light brown.

While the biscuits are baking, melt 4 tablespoons of butter on the stove or in the microwave. Stir in the 1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder and the dried parsley flakes.

As soon as the biscuits come out of the oven, while still piping hot, brush the tops generously with the garlic butter mixture then sprinkle lightly with kosher salt.

The biscuits are best served warm, but they are still good when made ahead and rewarmed in a low oven for a few minutes. Don't microwave them; they'll get rubbery.

As I always preach, quality ingredients lead to quality results. You can use margarine and skim milk and cheap plastic cheese in this recipe, but the biscuits won't taste anything like the real thing. If you want the real thing, use real ingredients.

Buon appetito!

Shopping for Fresh Food in the “Supermarket” Age

Once upon a time, there were no supermarkets in America. No Walmart Supercenters, no Costcos or Sam's Clubs, no giant chain retailers who sold everything from meat and dairy products to paint and automotive supplies all under one roof.

In fact, there was a time when consumers didn't even walk the aisles making their own selections. In the “old days” of my grandparents' youth, people went to neighborhood markets with shopping lists and it was the job of the store clerk to retrieve items from shelves and stockrooms and bring them out to be tallied and tied up and carried home. In many instances, the merchant delivered the purchases to the customer's residence.

Self-service grocery stores and chain grocers began popping up in the early twentieth century. These early establishments were not quite the “multi-mega-marts” of today. Although they boasted a variety of dried, canned, and packaged products, most carried only limited selections of fresh meat, dairy, and produce. “Supermarkets” with meat, produce, dairy, and bakery “departments” didn't really catch on until after World War II. (It is believed that Albers Super Market, a Cincinnati grocery store opened in 1933, was the first business of its kind to use the term “supermarket.”) Such places were, of course, considered hallmarks of a modern, progressive society. But were they really? They were more convenient, certainly. But were – and are – they better than the “old-fashioned” way of food shopping?

Let me take you back to my hometown in the '50s and early '60s. You “kids” under forty will get a kick out of this.

We had five grocery stores in our little town. Two were gleaming new “supermarkets” and three were plain old-fashioned grocers that had been in business for decades. The supermarkets were awesome places. Neon signs outside and bright fluorescent lighting inside practically screamed “modern age.” Glistening steel shopping carts traversed aisle after highly-polished aisle of what had to be everything you could ever want. Teenaged boys in aprons and bow ties worked there bagging groceries and carrying them out to cars parked in capacious lots adjoining the huge block-and-steel-and glass edifices. The biggest thrill for me were the cool “automatic” doors. I drove my mom nuts jumping on those rubber mats that “magically” opened the doors.

The three “old” grocery stores were small, cramped places. Dimly lit and wood-floored, you mostly carried your purchases in hand baskets. The few shopping carts the stores boasted could barely negotiate the narrow aisles. One store was located in the heart of “downtown” and the other two were among groups of neighborhood businesses. There were no parking lots. You just parked on the street in the closest space you could find. And, of course, there were no “automatic” doors.

And yet, that's where my mother preferred to shop.

Maybe it was because, despite having family members employed at the supermarket, nobody there ever called her by name when she walked through the “automatic” door. Nobody personally helped her find things and nobody offered suggestions of which product was best suited for her needs. Mom didn't drive, so maybe it was because she could just call the little store in our neighborhood and they would collect and package her order and have it waiting for me when I arrived with my Radio Flyer wagon.

We shopped those stores mostly for dry goods. There was a meat market in town. Sure, the new supermarkets had meat, but everything there was wrapped in plastic and seemed so......untouchable. The meat market had been around for years. The butcher knew everybody and always had an amazing array of fresh cuts of meat displayed behind the glass of his sparkling white showcases. You took a number and waited your turn. It wasn't usually a very long wait, and the butcher was always friendly and helpful. You pointed to what you wanted and he picked it up and let you get a good look at it before he wrapped it in white paper. Call me crazy, but it was a more personal way of buying food.

Same thing for produce. The grocery stores had fruits and vegetables, but the produce you bought from roadside stands or from the backs of farmers' trucks was so much better. Fresher and cheaper, too. And you knew where it came from. Of course, we also had a backyard garden that provided a lot of our produce. I remember spending an awful lot of valuable playtime shelling peas and snapping beans. But, otherwise, we bought produce from local sources whenever we could.

You could go to the store for “store-bought” bread, but most people preferred one of the town's two bakeries. I guess it would be called “artisanal” bread nowadays. We just called it “bread” – and it came sliced or unsliced. You could order what you wanted in the morning and the baker would have it ready for you in the afternoon. My grandfather was on a salt-restricted diet and one of the bakeries produced special “salt-free” bread for him. And, of course, the bakery was the only place to go for cakes and cookies and pastries. Mom baked a lot herself, but when she didn't have time, the bakery, rather than the supermarket, was always the first choice. It was just better product. And besides, the place smelled so heavenly!

In those days, we didn't buy much milk at the grocery store. We had an insulated box on the porch. Twice a week – way earlier than I usually woke up – the milkman would come from the local dairy and deliver whatever fresh milk, butter, cream, cheese or other dairy products Mom had ordered. We knew a lot of the farmers who produced the milk and the dairy that processed it was right on the edge of town. There was never a question about freshness or quality.

As much as I would like to see a resurgence of this type of shopping, there are some aspects I don't see happening on a big scale. For instance, I don't see the supercenter giving way to the corner grocery store. But while all things old may not be new again, a few are. Very slowly, new generations of Americans are rediscovering what us “old fogies” once took for granted. From small towns to big cities, people are beginning to figure out that convenience and low prices do not necessarily equal good quality. They are rediscovering local fresh food markets, and farmers markets are leading the trend.

According to industry figures, there were only 1,755 farmers markets listed in the United States about twenty years ago. The latest USDA numbers count 7,864, with a 9% increase between 2011 and 2012 alone. After years of living in or near big cities, I once again find myself enjoying life in a small town. There is a farmers market in my town, two elsewhere in the county, thirty within about fifty miles of my house, and nearly two hundred across the state. These are figures that would have been unimagined a decade or two ago. But more and more people are rediscovering the amazing freshness and quality of food that comes from just down the road as opposed to food that has been stored and shipped in from across the country or from a foreign land. And the friendly local people who sell you the best seasonal products they have to offer are also knowledgeable about those products. Not only will they tell you all the whens and wheres about what they sell, they often have a lot of good ideas about how to utilize their produce. Find more information and a farmers market near you at: http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/farmersmarkets

I'm fortunate that my little town also has a great, family-owned meat market. As a result I have not purchased the first ounce of meat at a chain supermarket in years. The meat at the market is fresher, better quality, and less expensive. And the guy who owns the place knows me by name. We chat for a few minutes whenever I go in, he makes invaluable suggestions and he ensures I get exactly what I need. And if he doesn't have something I want today, he'll get it for me by tomorrow. To be fair, if you shop at a higher end supermarket, there may be an actual butcher “in the back.” If so, get to know him. If not, find someplace that has such a person. I once went to a supermarket near my in-laws' home looking for some ground pork. They didn't have any on display and the guy in the dirty white coat putting packaged meat out on the shelves told me they didn't have any available. When I picked up a package of pork shoulder and asked if he could grind it for me, he said, “No. We're not equipped to do that.” That's the price you pay for “convenience.” Beyond that, you'd be surprised – and sickened – by what happens to some “supermarket” meats. The man who owns my local meat market used to work for one of the supermarket chains. Trust me. Go find a reputable butcher.

Once again I have the luxury of having two bakeries in town. They don't carry the variety of baked goods that the busy establishments of my childhood offered, but what they do have is far superior to any of the stuff embalmed in preservatives and entombed in plastic on supermarket shelves. Of course, like my mother, I bake at home. I almost never purchase “store-bought” bread and you simply can't compare my wife's fresh-from-the-oven cookies with the little preserved hockey pucks you buy at the supermarket. But if you really lack the time – or ability – to bake at home, it's worth the effort to seek out a real, honest-to-goodness bakery. Emphasis on the “goodness.”

I used to think the milkman was forever relegated to the pages of childhood memory. But there are dairy services in some cities that keep the home delivery tradition alive. A little Internet research found such services in Pennsylvania, Minneapolis-St Paul, and in the San Francisco Bay area. And artisinal dairies are cropping up all over, offering wonderful fresh cheeses, butter and other dairy products. Plastic processed cheese and chemical spreads can't hold a candle to real cheese and real butter. Even if there's not a milkman bringing it to your door, the good stuff is definitely worth going out of your way to find.

I can already hear the screams of protest. “You gotta be nuts! I don't have time to haul my tookus all over town like that!” I know, I know. Shopping the “old-fashioned” way isn't convenient. That's why we, as a society, stopped doing it. It's much easier to buy your meat at the same place you get your tires and it's faster to be able to pick up your milk and eggs where you go for gasoline. But is it better?

Food is the fuel upon which our bodies operate. It contains the elements essential to good health and longevity. I never cheap up on food. I'll drive used cars and wear department store clothes, but I refuse to put cheap, preservative-laden junk in my body for the sake of saving a few pennies. Would you deliberately put watered-down gas in your high-performance car? I once had an Oldsmobile with a big ultra-high compression 455 cubic-inch engine and a 4 bbl carburetor. It ran on nothing but Sunoco 260 premium gasoline. My sister borrowed it one day and kindly filled it up for me before returning it. Only she filled it with regular gas from a cheap off-brand station. It took me weeks to get that car running right again. Your body operates on the same principle, and if you have to take a little extra care, spend a little extra money, and go a little out of your way to find the “premium” fuel it requires, so be it. One fill-up may not hurt you, but a steady diet of cheap fuel will send your body straight to the junk yard.

So go to the supermarket for your basic stock pantry items. But whenever and wherever possible, buy quality fresh products from farmers markets, meat markets, fishmongers, dairies, bakeries, and other local sources. Even if it's not “convenient.” Shopping fresh and local is more than just a passing fad; it's a step “back to the future” to a way of life whose time has definitely come again.