Pasta
- Dried pasta should almost always be cooked al dente. Literally, this means “to the tooth,” referring to a slight firmness in the center of the noodle. Remember, pasta will continue to cook slightly after you drain it, so err on the side of undercooking.
- Fresh pasta cannot truly be al dente, since it’s soft to begin with. It usually cooks in 2-4 minutes, much faster than dried pasta.
- Pasta water should be salted after it’s boiling, not before. It will actually increase the time it takes to boil the water.
- The Italians say “salt the pasta water until it tastes like the sea.” It takes a good bit of salt to do this (a few tablespoons per quart), but don’t worry– you won’t be eating this much salt, as most of it will be left behind in the water.
- Don’t put any oil in the pasta water– it will only make it harder for sauce to stick to the pasta. Only if the pasta is going to sit for a while before being used do I mix in some oil to prevent it from sticking.
- The kitchen myth that cold water boils faster than warm water is untrue. A watched pot, on the other hand…
- Choose the pasta noodle depending on what the sauce is, and try to get what’s recommended in the recipe. Different sauces stick well to different shapes. Creamier sauces are good with fresh pasta, while thinner, tomato-based sauces are usually better with dried.
- Mario Batali says that Americans, by and large, tend to put way too much sauce on pasta, taking away from the pleasure of the pasta itself. Who am I to disagree?
Pasta
Vegetarian pasta recipes
