How to Cook Pasta Like an Italian
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“MY WAY…”
Frank Sinatra isn’t the only one to croon that line. Every single Italian I interviewed told me their recipe was a modo mio.
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In a tiny town near Salerno in Campania, one nonna told me that her version of Cavatelli with Goat Ragù was “vastly different” from the one her neighbor two courtyards over had taught me the day before. When I pointed out that they seemed exactly the same, she huffed, “Pfff, she uses two cloves of garlic.”
I encourage you throughout the book to do it “my way” … meaning YOUR way! Feel free to add more or less of any ingredient. The amounts listed are just a rough suggestion, and in fact it is almost impossible to give exact quantities in many cases. This is especially true for foods that can vary widely in taste depending on quality or freshness, like grated cheese, garlic cloves, and minced herbs. For example, if you buy farmer’s-market–fresh basil in July, it will taste stronger, and therefore you’ll need less, than supermarket basil you buy in January. Aged, good-quality, imported Parmesan cheese will taste both less salty and more cheesy than pre-grated supermarket cheese, so you’ll need to use less, but perhaps add a pinch more salt to the recipe. The only way through this is to do as the Italians do: Taste as you cook, and adjust seasonings accordingly. I cannot stress this point strongly enough. For raw foods, like the ground-meat mixture for meatballs, pinch off a tiny portion and either pan fry or microwave it and then taste.
I loathe tablespoon and cup measurements for subjective ingredients like cheese, herbs, olive oil, and salt, as how much you use is totally up to your own tastes, but I include them to give you a ballpark idea of quantity. Please use those measurements only as rough guidelines, as many foods, like grated cheese or flour, can vary widely in amount depending on how firmly you pack them into the measuring cup.
There are two types of pasta, fresh and dried, and both types can be made with or without eggs.
Most of the recipes in this book call for dried pasta, but you can use fresh instead, if you like. For just a few recipes, however, it is essential to use only fresh, not dried, pasta, including the appetizer Pasta-Wrapped Shrimp and two of the desserts: Almond Pasta Crunch and Sweet Crispy Pasta Nests.
Not all Italians who like fresh pasta are elbow deep in flour, as evidenced by the many pasta shops located throughout the country. Fresh pasta is also sold here in the States in specialty shops and even in many supermarkets, both ready-cut or as whole sheets. These sheets are very versatile, as you can cut them into any shapes you like and prepare them many ways.
Here are just a few suggestions of what to do with fresh sheet pasta:
1 Unique shapes: Cut the sheet with a cookie cutter or a knife into odd shapes—triangles, squiggly noodles, circles, whatever. It’s called badly cut, maltagliati, in Italian.
2 Pretty patterns: Gently roll the sheet of pasta with a rolling pin over an indented or patterned surface: a gnocchi or cavarola board, or any clean textured surface. Then cut the sheets into whatever shapes you’d like. The indents are not only pretty, but they also make it easier for the sauce to adhere to the surface of the pasta. Or press the dough with corzetti stamps, round stamps used to emboss pasta, to make pasta discs.
3 Ravioli: Use in place of homemade dough, cutting the sheet with a ravioli cutter, for any recipe like the Apple Ravioli with Fava-Pistachio Pesto or Sweet Lemon-Marjoram Ravioli.
4 Italian “nachos”: Cut the pasta sheet into wide strips and fry. Fried pasta, a typical appetizer in many regions of Italy, is served with salami, olives, or cheeses. In Puglia, they serve fried pasta crisps with some left plain and others filled with anchovy paste.
5 Soup “crackers”: Cut the pasta sheet into thin strips and fry. Use them to top soups like pasta e fagioli.
Italians stress over and over the importance of using high-quality ingredients: the best possible pasta, top-quality olive oil, the freshest vegetables. It’s true that many quality ingredients are expensive—there’s no way around that. That’s one reason that this book contains dozens of recipes that put ingredients like beans and vegetables front and center—they don’t have to be super costly, even for the best quality.
Many chefs and home cooks observe that the more you cook, the more money you save on processed and prepared foods.
A few ingredients where quality really matters:
PASTA: Use only quality pasta. It is more expensive, but well worth it. Do a taste test comparing an artisan-made, imported Italian pasta to a bargain box and you’ll see: Boil a small quantity of each in separate pots, using exactly the same amount of water and salt. First, drain and take a whiff. Note that the better pasta has a fresh wheat aroma. Next, test the pasta’s ability to absorb sauce. Put a few strands of each into two different bowls with a little water and after several minutes you’ll notice that the better pasta will have absorbed the water. Then pinch both types of pasta between your thumb and index finger. The inferior pasta will be gummy to the touch and soft in the middle, while the better pasta stays al dente. Lastly, taste each pasta plain, with no sauce. That should be enough to convince you!
A few of my favorite artisanal pasta companies are: Benedetto Cavalieri, Felicetti, Garofalo, Giuseppe Coco, Rummo Lenta Lavorazione, and Rustichella d’Abruzzo.
When making homemade pasta, you can use all-purpose flour or the classic Italian pasta flour, “0” flour.
BREADCRUMBS: For the best results, use freshly made breadcrumbs. Save the ends, crumbs, and odd bits of crusty breads, oven-dry them until crisp, then grind them in a food processor or grate them with a cheese grater. They will keep in an airtight container for months. Then just before serving, re-toast the breadcrumbs you’ll need for a recipe in a pan with a few tablespoons of olive oil.
CHEESE: Use quality cheese. If a recipe calls for ricotta or mozzarella, try to find them freshly made. If it calls for aged cheese, like grana padano or Parmesan, choose a good-quality one with a nice grainy texture. Buy a whole piece of aged cheese and grate it just before use. This way, not only are you getting fresh quality cheese, but you also can vary how you grate it: Use the large holes on a cheese grater for nice chunky bits, a Microplane for fine, cloudlike tufts, or a vegetable peeler for thin slices of cheese.
There are hundreds of different types of wonderful aged cheeses, so try new types besides Parmesan. Visit cheese shops and ask for tastes. For robust sauces, try pecorino or caciocavallo cheeses from southern Italy.
BROTH: Homemade is best. I freeze all sorts of cooked and raw leftovers in plastic ziplock bags: bones and odd bits of meat, both raw and cooked, as well as veggies and herbs—stems, peelings, and cooked and uncooked leftovers. Then I boil up a batch of soup stock whenever I’ve accumulated enough. The stuff that comes in a can can’t compare!
TOMATOES: Many recipes call for fresh tomatoes, which ideally should be summer sweet and ripe. When using canned tomatoes, select those from a lined can or glass jar. There is a staggering, and sometimes confusing, variety of canned tomatoes available—whole peeled tomatoes, crushed tomatoes, diced tomatoes, tomato paste, strained tomatoes, and tomato puree. Some recipes in this book call for tomato puree, which should be smooth and not chunky. If the brand you selected is on the chunkier side, puree it in a blender or pass it through a food mill until smooth. Other recipes call for strained tomatoes (Pomi has a good version); it’s a thinner type of tomato puree, available in most American supermarkets. A great brand of strained tomatoes, also known as passato di pomodoro, is Alice Nero, which has superb vine-ripe fresh flavor and a very smooth texture.
OLIVE OIL: There are hundreds of brands, with a lot of variation in flavor. My advice is to taste olive oil before buying it to discover your favorites. Many specialty shops and markets offer tastings. Some olive oils are fruity, some are more vegetal, and some have a peppery aftertaste. The range is huge and exciting. Of the olive oils found in supermarkets, I personally like Colavita brand best, especially their Fruttato Extra Virgin Olive Oil, which has a fruity fragrance and nice bold flavor.
CAPERS: Buy salt-cured capers, not those packed in vinegar. The taste is brighter. The very best capers, large and full of flavor, come from the Sicilian islands of Pantelleria and Salina.
FRESH HERBS: If a recipe calls for fresh herbs, do not substitute dried. Buy herbs that are aromatic and remember that you might have to add more if they are out of season or left on the shelf or fridge for a while. Use all of the herb, including stems, which have lots of flavor. Rinse the bunch and then chop, starting at the top and continuing down, leaving out only the thickest ends and stems, which can be used for soups.
SPICES AND SALT: Use only freshly grated whole nutmeg and freshly ground black pepper. It makes a world of difference in taste and aroma. For the table or to garnish certain dishes like Pasta-Wrapped Shrimp you might like to try a pretty snowflake-like salt called flaked salt or one of the many types of specialty gourmet salts infused with smoke, red wine, or bits of truffles.
Avere sale in zucca.
He has salt on his pumpkin.
SAID OF SOMEONE CLEVER
1 Preparation
Pasta must “swim like a fish in the ocean,” say the Italians. So, use a big pot so the pasta has room to move while it cooks.
Think horizontally when cooking small amounts or filled pasta. When making long pasta like spaghetti for just one person, Italians put it into a wide, shallow pan. You need only fill the pan with enough water to cover the spaghetti horizontally, not vertically! Cook ravioli and other filled pasta in a wide, shallow pan as well, so it jostles less than it would in deep water. If making many portions, use two pans. And to avoid breaking the ravioli, lift them out of the water with a slotted spoon instead of straining them in a colander.
Start with cold water, not hot, as hot water passes through different pipes and picks up more impurities. Use at least 1 quart (approximately 1 L) for every 4 ounces (115 grams) of pasta.
Never put oil in the water. It prevents the pasta from releasing its starch and absorbing the sauce.
Do not add the pasta or the salt until the water boils. The water must be rapidly boiling before you put in the pasta, otherwise the pasta becomes gummy. Add the salt after the water boils so it doesn’t settle at the bottom of the pot. How much salt to add is up to your personal taste.
2 Cooking the Pasta
Use the time on the package only as a general guideline. The ideal cooking time will vary due to personal preferences, amount of water in the pot, and many other factors. The best way to tell if pasta is ready is to taste it. Start tasting 3 to 4 minutes before the suggested cooking time on the package.
Never leave pasta unattended. “Pasta suffers if it’s lonely,” says Riccaro Felicetti, president and fourth-generation owner of Pastificio Felicetti. You need to be near the boiling pot to give it the occasional stir so the pasta doesn’t stick. “Pasta has been around for centuries; it should be respected. Give it your time and your attention,” Felicetti stresses.
Never rinse pasta. The starch on the pasta helps sauces adhere to it, and is a thickening agent for the sauce, too.
Always save a little of the pasta cooking water to toss with the pasta and sauce to thicken and meld the flavors. Again, it’s that starch that helps bring everything together.
3 Finishing the Dish
The absolute cardinal rule and single most important technique for making perfect pasta is to finish cooking the pasta in the sauce. Italians call it saltare in padella—jumping in the pan—which allows the sauce to thicken and the flavors to meld, as the natural starch in the pasta acts as a thickening and binding agent. I’ve added it to the instructions for virtually every recipe. It’s an important step, so please don’t skip it.
There is no “right” pasta for a particular sauce, but generally short pasta is best paired with thick, full-flavored sauces. Thinner, lighter sauces, like those made with fresh tomatoes, go best with long thin pasta, like spaghetti. Throughout the book, I suggest either long or short where applicable and when it truly doesn’t matter I’ve written “any pasta.” If I mention a particular shape in the ingredient list, it’s just a suggestion to pique your curiosity, so by all means use whatever shape tickles your fancy. All the shapes I reference are in the photo glossary at the end of the book (see this page).
Learn to play with fire! Il fuoco fa il buon cuoco—fire makes the chef—meaning that knowing when to raise or lower the flame is the key to good cooking. Adjust the heat and flame levels to create rich, multileveled flavors. Don’t be afraid to add heat; just keep a close eye and stir constantly when using high temperatures. When you cook pasta risotto-style, right in the sauce, like Fish Heads, Fish Heads, remember to raise the heat to high at the end of cooking to thicken the sauce. It’s especially important to finish on high heat any pasta dishes that feature a wine or a vegetable or fruit-juice glaze, like Pasta with Caramelized Oranges and Spaghetti in Red Wine. Similarly, play with low heat. Some sauces, like Slow-Simmered Tuna, Caramelized Onions & “Candles” are best cooked over extremely low temperatures, what many Italians refer to as “cooking by candlelight.” Start the onions on low heat until they release moisture, then slowly raise the heat and finish cooking them on high for a deep caramelized flavor.
