He does however, lick his knife.
Maybe not enough, though. The stores around here had short pasta for awhile, (I think it was Barilla) but it’s gone now. I picked up a couple of boxes when they were closing it out.
Yeah, I don’t understand this thing about needing smaller noodles. I just use a big pot.
I went to the grocery store, the noodles that were cut in half are 50% more expensive than the long noodles. So nah, I don’t need them that badly. I can just break them myself if I need to.
Originally Posted by pulykamell View Post
“No, I do not bite my fork.”
I bite my fork but it is OK because it is a plastic fork. Oh wait - did I just go to the back of the bus full of traditional spaghetti eaters? Again?
I did want to mention that the shorter noodles still wrap around a fork just fine. The only thing different is that you don’t get the 10" long stragglers slapping your chin.
Dennis
I have a question for those here who seem to consider five-inch spaghetti some form of sacrilege; why is ten-inch dry spaghetti somehow acceptable? Why don’t you insist on spaghetti (or whatever form of pasta) made from scratch for each meal?
sob
You may bite a plastic fork all you like, as far as I’m concerned!
If you keep the pasta with the sauce for too long, the pasta will dry out the sauce. Doesn’t make for very good leftovers.
Dry and fresh pastas are two different beasts. One is not better than the other. They taste different and are usually made from different ingredients.
Quite simply, because the alleged superiority of fresh pasta is mostly an American misconception. In most cases and for most purposes dried pasta is just as good or better, and IMHO this is especially true for spaghetti/spaghettini where you want it al dente and it will be served with sauce. From an article in the New York Times on how Italians cook and eat pasta:
… most of that pasta comes from a box.
A persistent notion in American kitchens is that pasta, to be good, must be freshly made by hand, preferably by a venerable grandmother wielding a rolling pin. Second best is pasta cranked from a machine of the kind that tends to gather dust in American kitchens, and with good reason: except in skilled hands, the pasta that exudes from it is seldom very good. Finally, there’s the kind of ready-made, fresh pasta available in American shops – an overworked, extruded paste that too often turns to goo in the cooking water.
And only after all that comes pasta secca, pasta in a box.
Not here in Italy. Except in a few regions of the north, Italians don’t bother much with pasta fresca at all. Don’t get me wrong. Beautifully made pasta fresca is glorious, but for everyday meals, whether in high-priced Milanese restaurants or humble Tuscan farmhouses, Italian cooks rely on the stuff in the box. And they don’t apologize for it, either.
That’s not just because pasta secca represents a cheap, quick, easy way to throw together a delicious dish. Italian cooks, professional and at home, are fully persuaded that commercial dried pasta is a high-quality product, every bit as tasty as – and often even better than – pasta fresca.
As long as I’m quoting authorities on Italian culinary authenticity, here’s a quote on the horrors of breaking spaghetti that’s similar to what I said earlier:
The noodles should never be broken before cooking or cut with a knife once they’re on your plate, according to Frank Scafidi, whose parents owned an Italian deli and grocery store. “You might as well put it into a blender and then pour it into a bowl. That makes spaghetti nothing more than ‘spoonable’ pasta — and there’s an Italian phrase for that — acini de pepe. We sold lots of that in our store, too, for people who intended to make a pasta-based soup,” he said." Frankly, spaghetti is best enjoyed when it can retain its length as it makes its approach to your taste buds. Doing anything too exotic to it before it reaches your mouth is to deny yourself of one of life’s great dining traditions."
How To Eat Spaghetti Like A True Italian
Yes, that does appear to be the tradition. After failing to find anything definitive on it, I did find an article on “proper” Italian cooking that stressed mixing the pasta and the sauce and in fact briefly cooking them together before serving.
It’s not going to change the way I eat it – I know what I like and I even theorized why it tastes better to me with the sauce on top. One other thing that might be worth pointing out is that it’s also Italian tradition to serve much smaller portions of pasta than we do here in North America, because it’s customarily just an intermediate course that’s followed by a meat or fish dish (which is also why I understand you won’t find “spaghetti and meatballs” in Italy). Also, there seems to be a preference for very simple sauces, like just tossing the spaghetti in olive oil and garlic. It sounds like a whole different approach to spaghetti.
Perhaps. My favorite meatballs are from the same little Italian store that makes my favorite sauce. They differ from anything I can find in ordinary stores and are exceptionally lean and flavorful, made I think with veal, beef, and possibly chicken (it’s been a while since I paid attention to the ingredients). But they are also very tender, which seems to me to complement their role in spaghetti where you want the texture experience to be the pasta, not the meatballs, IMHO.
This thread is buggin’ the hell out of me. I must be losing my edge.
I actually don’t mind meatballs poached in the cooking liquid. I typically don’t do it that way, but if you like more delicate meatballs, it works for me. There’s certain stews I do, for instance, where I do not brown the meat precisely because I want a more delicate flavor and don’t want all that maillard browning (veal, in particular, but there’s also a chicken in dill-cream sauce thing I do where I don’t like to brown, either.) So it depends on what you’re going for.
Quite right too. Eat it the way you enjoy it.
It’s a big meal-its-own-right in the UK as well. But I’ve had it that way in Italy too, as well as a small part of a bigger meal.
I love spaghetti and meatballs, but I do certainly think of it as an American dish, yes. It never really had a place among Italian dishes in the British culinary repertoire.
The classic British “Spaghetti Bolognese” is a very ersatz, inauthentic affair too. No self-respecting Italian would serve a tomatoey minced-beef sauce with spaghetti. It’s the wrong shape.
Yup. The best pasta dishes I’ve eaten were in the Amalfi region - though I’m sure the whole country would claim similar! - generally they had no more than half a dozen ingredients, including the pasta.
We have fewer such places here, I imagine, so I have no extent of experience from which to draw a favourite! I make my own meatballs and sauce. Not some sort of culinary oneupmanship, I hasten to add: I happen to enjoy doing so - my kids squishing everything together and rolling the balls while I sip a martini - at least as much as I enjoy eating them, and doing so has become an integral part of the meal’s experience.
No, but this is.
I actually managed to find another brand of spaghetti alla chittara here at a grocery called Mariano’s. It was La Molasina brand and $2.19 for a 16oz bag. We’ll check it out soon enough. Thanks!
I have to admit, I didn’t think anyone without kids would break their pasta. However, enough breakers have checked in that this is clearly a thing. I’m not sure I’ve ever had halfsize spaghetti but it seems like it wouldn’t wind around the fork right and the texture would be off.
I stopped by my Mariano’s in Harwood Heights tonight and found that pasta. There was a second in a 500g package for $3.49, Attilio brand.
Cool. I have never notices these two brands but I’ll keep an eye out for them. In the meantime, looking forward to hearing what you all think.
The local HyVee has their store brand pasta on sale at 10 for $10 and the pot-sized was included. And it’s the same size box (16 ounces) as the other spaghetti.
I don’t know if this has been mentioned yet , but check out your local Jewel, the 24 ounce jars of Rao’s are $5.99 until March 27.
Rao’s is the best, but Lidia Bastianich’s sauces aren’t bad either. Those are the ONLY ones we’ll buy. Heck, I’m home all day, and how hard is it to make a good pasta sauce?
One more time, just because - DON’T add oil to your pasta water! You want the sauce to cling to and be absorbed by the pasta, not slide off. Lidia agrees with me. 