There used to be a store near my old house where you could buy fresh made pasta to take home and cook. They would cut it right in front of you. It was great. Love the stuff.
(I know some people can’t seem to tell the difference, my Wife being one).
Yes, the mixing before serving is what I was condemning. I always put the pasta on a plate and then ladle the sauce over it. As I said earlier, I don’t care about tradition and I don’t care what Italians allegedly do, I keep it separate for the same reason that I sautee whole mushrooms separately and distribute them around the sides and top, and for the same reason that the Parmigiano is sprinkled over the top instead of being thrown into the sauce. Sure, it’s all going to be eaten together, but part of the joy of eating is the differences in taste and texture in the various distinguishable complementary ingredients.
That said, when there is leftover spaghetti, there is no alternative but to put it in a casserole dish and mix it with the sauce, since by the end of the meal the leftover noodles in the colander are already sticking together. I throw in the leftover mushrooms and put it in the fridge and it makes a passable microwave meal the next day, but to my mind it’s more like a pauper’s dinner compared to the feast of the night before.
That’s the only jarred sauce I’ve tasted that I actually enjoyed, and wasn’t just some “well, I need food in my belly, I don’t care what it tastes like.” That said, I just can’t bring myself to spend like eight bucks for a friggin jar of spaghetti sauce.
She breaks the pasta when she’s cooking. It’s purely based on the fact that we cook such a small amount and use such a small pan. One-third of a box is both dinner and a leftovers lunch, maybe two. If you have a large family you might never think that way. Basically, you’re telling me to whittle a tree to make a tastier toothpick.
We don’t mix the pasta and the sauce. But we do have a recipe that calls for cooking the meatballs, once they’re browned, in a sauce made from tomato sauce and tomato paste, other stuff added appropriately, which imparts a nice flavor to them and can be ladled over the pasta.
Well, I’ve completely stopped browning MY meatballs. I prepare the sauce, get it simmering, then form each meatball and drop ‘em one at a time into the pot. Makes for a nice, tender meatball.
How do you like THEM apples? Come on, everybody pile on.
That’s good because the ideal meatball is, for lack of a better word, “porous”. It is firm enough not to fall apart, but soft enough to allow the sauce to permeate the meatball. When you brown meatballs, you are essentially sealing the surface so this process cannot take place.
We catch it on sale for $5.99 and stock up. BTW, if you make your own pizza at home, Rao’s pizza sauce is fantastic as well. Trader Joe’s is a solid second place though, at 1/3 the price of Rao’s.
It’s your meal, obviously, and you’re clearly welcome to enjoy it the way you enjoy it!
I don’t particularly care about the tradition of it either - if it tasted good to crunch it straight from the bag then I’d do so - it’s more that it’s not too silly to at least try taking recommendations about how to serve pasta from Italian cooks. I have, and have found them to be A Good Thing. It was certainly the case here in the UK for many years that - along with the rest of our bastardised culinary interpretations - standard service technique was “sauce on a bed of pasta”. Then I came to realise that “pasta with sauce” is an item, a unified recipe: the pasta isn’t finished and fit for service till it’s dressed, and the sauce combines properly with the pasta if done so as part of the cooking process.
And I don’t think there’s anything ‘alleged’ about Italians serving it like that!
Yes! Maillard reaction = flavour! “Sealing” isn’t really what happens - even with solid slabs of meat like steaks and chops.
Interesting cultural aside though: American diners appear far more tenderness-obsessed then much of the rest of the world, if recipe sites/cookery shows/forums are anything to go by. I don’t want meatballs too tender, I want a bit of texture.
