In my house, when nobody feels like cooking, we cook something simple. Usually it's one of our fallback recipes, though. Our favorite fallback is pasta.
Pasta
For those of you who don't like pasta...I can't help you. Go somewhere else. For those of you who do, let's talk pasta.
I'm a white pasta guy. And those who know me well, know that I am opinionated...No...really! Not very often do I find a flavored pasta, or a whole wheat pasta for that matter, that isn't too gummy or too hard. I've tried corn pasta and wheat pastas, pastas from sun dried tomatoes, squid ink pasta...just kidding. Saw that on chopped. LOL But, I'm EXTREMELY partial to a good, white, semolina Italian pasta made with copper dies. OH YEAH!...copper dies. Who cares? Me.
Have you ever seen the close up of a hair. Wait...just a minute I'll show you...
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| Get it? Good pasta! |
Ok, I'm done talking pasta making. Of course, this is just for dried pasta. I, personally, love fresh pasta, but have never made fresh Italian pasta. When I do, I will blog it.
We have a few favorite types of pasta. For spaghetti, the thinner, the better. Angel hair is what we eat the most of, although, we eat a lot of maltagliati or penne (which, if you care, means quill. Like the end of a fountain pen). We eat others stuff too, but those are the ones we lean toward.
Cooking Pasta
If you can't cook a good pasta...fugetaboudit! It's as easy as boiling water...sea water that is. I always use a medium to large stock pot, depending on how much pasta we are making. Don't crowd your pasta. Give it plenty of room to swim. Don't forget that dried pasta plumps up when you cook it, so err on the side of too much water, rather than too little. And, speaking of water, always salt your water. A good rule of thumb is to make it taste like sea water. It's the only chance we get to season our pasta. We do this because we cook in layers...right?....RIGHT?...Good. We don't spend hours cooking a good sauce just to dump it on bland pasta.
Bring our brilliantly blessed brine to a rolling boil. That means really boiling fast. Drop your pasta in the pot, give it a quick stir to make sure nothing is sticking together and slam a lid back on the pot. The point is that we need to get the water back up to temperature as quickly as possible.
After the appropriate time (this all depends on the thickness of the pasta, etc. (check on the back of the box)) it's time to taste. Yes, you must taste it. The proper term for the correct doneness of pasta is al dente. This means literally "to the tooth" or "to the bite". It is firm, but not hard. It's before you get to mushy...way before. Don't throw your spaghetti against the wall. That kinda works, but it's kinda messy.
Pasta's done...now what. Please!...Please!...Please! do NOT rinse your pasta! This is the number one biggest mistake someone can make with pasta. It's ok if you're making pasta salad, but please don't do it to your spaghetti. Just don't.. Rinsing the pasta removes all the starch. Starch helps the sauce stick to the pasta. Notice a pattern? We're trying to get the sauce to stay on the pasta.
Next time we're going to make the stuff that goes on top of the pasta...wanna see it?
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| Penne With Pablano Pepper Meat Sauce |
As always, eat well.
