Pasta Introduction

Pasta in Italy is a generic term for the durum wheat dough that Italians boil and serve with sauce or oil or butter or in soup.

Pasta is a staple of the Italian diet.  It's served as a first course, in portions much smaller than those eaten outside of Italy.

An odd fact:  It's even cooked for pets in Italy, as pet food, purchased from pet shops.

There are two categories of pasta:

• pasta asciutta (dried pasta) can be stored for years without going bad, but requires a longer cooking time than fresh pasta

• pasta fresca (fresh pasta) has a very short cooking time, but it cannot be stored for very long before going bad

Pasta History

The history in Italy of pasta cooked and seasoned with a sauce can be traced as far back as the Etruscans (900 B.C.) who seasoned their pasta with game (venison) based sauces.  The story of pasta coming from China is a myth.

Maestro Martino’s De arte coquinaria from 1450 has recipes for vermicelli and maccheroni.  And his sun-dried pastas could be stored for up to 3 years, and when cooked, were cooked for 1 to 2 hours! 

Tagliatelle:  Martino calls it maccaroni romaneschi, but it is the same as today's tagliatelle, even to the point of telling us we can cook them in the nest form or separated into string form.  The pasta is rolled around a bastone, club, which today in Italian is called a matarello, the the rolling pin is removed and the pasta is cut.  He says to cook it in broth or water, then serve it seasoned with butter, cheese and sweet spice mix.  Interestingly, today in Italy you can buy a tagliatelle that is twisted, and called maccheroni.  And in Italy maccheroni is used as a generic term for pasta.

Tagliatelle (from Laporta)

Spaghetti:  Martino calls this triti or formentine, but as described it is recognizable as today's spaghetti or linguini.  He says to make it like the tagliatelle, but cut it much thinner.  It's served up the same as tagliatelle.

Spighetti (from Laporta)

Bucatoni:  Martino call them maccaroni siciliani, and explains that you make a flour pasta that includes egg white and rose water.  Then you roll strips of the pasta as long as your hand, around a wire as thick as a piece of straw (spagho), then remove the wire.  This makes a thick, hollow pasta that today is called generally bucatoni (or bucati).  He says to dry them in the sun.  I actually call them fire-hoses, because that is what they remind me of.  They are very heavy, and need to be cooked a long time, but perhaps not the 2 hours that Martino recommends!

Vermicelli:  This soup pasta is the same as today's soup pasta called vermicelli (little worms, or larvae).  Martino says to cook them for 1 hours, and to color the dish yellow with saffron, unless you cooked them in milk.

Pater Nostri (Our Fathers from Laporta)

Ruote (wheels from Laporta)

Pasta Sauces

The earliest seasonings for the cooked pasta were meat sauces, milk, butter, cheese, vegetables, and only after the arrival of the tomato from the New World, and then some time to be convinced it wasn’t poisonous, did tomato find it’s ideal partner in pasta. 

Practically every family in Italy has a favorite sugo or salsa for their pasta, so I won’t waste time putting one here.  (I provide a link below to a recipe site with lots of sauce recipes.)

Most recipes have you melt the butter, then add the flour, and then slowly whisk in the hot liquid.  I find that unnecessarily laborious and too often end up with balls of flour.  I never have a problem when I start with cold liquid, whisk in the flour, then heat it up slowly, whisking as it cooks. 

After a low boil, whisking continually, for about 5 minutes, it is usually ready. 

Remove it from the heat and add the butter and cheese and stir until they melt.

Then add the salt and nutmeg to taste.  To give you an idea of how much nutmeg you might use, I like a lot of nutmeg, which usually means about ½ a teaspoon.

Gigli (from Laporta)

Gnocchietti (from Laporta)

Orecchietti (from Laporta)

Fresh Pasta

Fresh pasta is made in sheets and cut and shaped in the various types of pasta. 

To make fresh pasta at home, one must have:

• a pasta machine to create the sheets, (this is not a necessity, but your pasta will generally be thicker without one unless you are very strong and have lots of experience and patience)

• a rolling board, (or marble counter, or floured tabletop)

• a rolling pin, (the Italian matarello is ideal for pasta making because it is 3 times as long as a pie crust rolling pin)

• patience,

• patience

• and more patience. 

And as with all artistry, practice makes perfect.

Basic Pasta Recipe

250 grams sifted flour

2 eggs

1 teaspoon oil

1/2 teaspoon salt

Sift the flour into a mountain on your work surface.  Make a bowl shape in the middle of the mountain. 

Put the rest of the ingredients in the 'bowl'.  Mix it all together with your fingertips, then your hands until you have a firm ball of pasta dough. 

Add flour a bit at a time until the dough is dry enough to roll out.

If you have a small rolling pin, it is best to divide the dough in two, and work each section separately.  Roll out the dough into a thin sheet.

To make tagliatelle, lightly flour the sheet, then fold it up accordion style.  With a large, sharp knife, slice the roll up into tagliatelle-wide strips.

Gently shake out the strips into the tagliatelle strands.  Set them on a floured board or tray.  Cover them with a kitchen towel and let them dry a bit until you are ready to cook them.

Fresh pasta cooks very quickly, so stand ready to remove the pasta from the boiling, salted water, and put on the sauce or seasonings, and serve it immediately.

Then accept the raves with grace and humility.

Here is a recipe that is a bit easier, called Gnocchi di spinaci or malfatti alla fiorentina.  It requires none of those things listed above.  It is typically served during Lent.  (I provide a link below to a page with a good, brief summary of pasta making.)

Trofie (from Laporta)

Casarecce (from Laporta)

Mezze penne (Rigate)

Penne (from Laporta)

Pennoni (from Laporta)

Lumaconi (big snails from Laporta)

Just one last word, concerning the cold-water-on-cooked-pasta debate: