In your kitchen, making flavorful bowls of pasta starts with cooking it correctly. “I don’t want to void the flavor of the pasta.” (Yet some guests love her sauces so much they ask for extra sauce on the side.) It should be “the right amount,” says Pagliarini, explaining, “There has to be a spirit of generosity in our cooking, but the pasta itself has its own integrity and that is to be respected.” Not surprisingly, Americans prefer a lot of sauce. In Italian cuisine, sauce is a condiment or seasoning for pasta. “It’s a simple plate of pasta but when it’s properly seasoned it’s a poem,” she says.Īnd therein lies a big difference between what you see on Italian versus American tables. One of her favorite peasant-style dishes is Sagne e Ceci made with thin squares of pasta, chickpeas, red pepper, garlic, and oil. And deviate if the mood strikes me.” Examples of the chef’s current seasonal pairings include pappardelle with braised wild boar, squid ink linguine with red wine braised calamari, and casarecce ai funghi (a short scroll-like pasta with mushrooms, asparagus, and Parmesan).Īt Spiga, Iocco tosses a silky, bright green pesto with mandilli, wide, thin sheets of pasta with plenty of surface area to coat with sauce. When Pagliarini creates pasta dishes for Giulia’s menu, he chooses the sauce and its ingredients, then pairs it with a pasta, which, he says, has a lot to do with the “textural experience.” For pairings, he says, “I will look at what is done traditionally and see what our kitchen can produce. The tagliatelle Bolognese served at Fox & the Knife. Shapes like orecchiette and cavatelli capably hug chunks of sausage and broccoli (or broccoli rabe) for easy forkfuls. Meatballs typically perch on top of a tangle of spaghetti, while the delicate briny flavor of clams is complemented by thin noodles in Linguine alle Vongole. Other well-established combos include Tortellini en Brodo, Bucatini all’Amatriciana, and Penne all’Arrabbiata. In Fettuccine Alfredo, the classic, very rich cream, butter, and Parmesan sauce is well served by ribbons of fettucine, while spaghetti is commonly paired with carbonara sauce made of eggs, cheese, and bits of cured pork. Spaghetti works well with olive oil-based sauces, such as aglio e olio (garlic and oil) and cacio e pepe (cheese and black pepper). Michael Pagliarini, chef and co-owner of Giulia in Cambridge, says, “There’s a reason why pairings evolved the way they have based on regional ingredients and production techniques.” In other words, traditional pairings of sauce and pasta have been passed down for centuries (or just decades) from Italian nonnas and other cooks.Ī rich bolognese from Bologna in Emilia-Romagna is typically served with a sturdy long pasta like tagliatelle or pappardelle or thick tubes of rigatoni these stand up to the long-simmered meat sauce. With all the choices of pasta shapes, sizes, and textures, there are many cases when just a few stand up to or host or cradle a particular sauce in the best possible way. “It’s not as dense a product as a dried noodle.” “Egg gives fresh pasta a richness,” he says. Most dried pastas, and some fresh, are made with semolina, a durum wheat high in gluten and protein, which helps the pasta keep its shape during cooking.Īt Dave’s Fresh Pasta in Somerville, owner David Jick says they roll their dough very thin through a sheeter, then cut it to yield long strands of spaghetti, fettucine, linguine, and pappardelle, as well as sheets for lasagna and ravioli. Fresh pasta usually contains eggs, while dried pasta is generally flour and water. Couscous, both the small pearls and grain-size kernels, is a type of pasta.Īside from its shape, the other way to classify pasta is fresh or dried. Tiny pastas, often used in soups, include orzo, pastina, and ditalini (“little thimbles”). Sheets or broad noodles are used for layering, as in lasagna, and making stuffed pastas, such as ravioli, tortellini (“little twists”), tortelloni, cappelletti (“little hats”), and agnolotti (“priests’ caps”). Shells and cup-like shapes, such as orecchiette, (“little ears”), conchiglie (“conch shells”), lumache (“snails”), and cavatelli (“little hollows”) are perfectly designed for capturing tasty morsels. Varieties include rotini, fusilli (“little springs”), gemelli (“twins”), campanelle (“bellflowers”), corkscrew-shaped cavatappi, farfalle (“butterflies”), and radiatori (“little radiators”). Twists, spirals, and squiggles make for fun eating.
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