What are some of the fundamental mistakes that people in the U.S. tend to make when cooking pasta?
Well, there’s a few of them and I get a lot of grief for talking about this, particularly grabbing spaghetti and breaking it in half. There’s an integrity to pasta. And people think I’m crazy when I say this, but having worked with Italians for years, I think there’s a lot of reverence that goes into the food. And there’s a deep understanding that Italians will sit at a restaurant and argue with the waiter to make sure that, is that chicken, is it free-range? Is it ruspante? What’s the pasta like? What kind of flour was it made with? They have this intimate knowledge of food and no one gets offended by those things in Italy, by those crazy conversations that Italians have with servers.
Whereas here, I’d be like, “Just shut up and eat.” You know? If someone’s going to ask me those questions and come to my house for dinner, I would say, “What are you talking about? Just shut up, sit down and eat and enjoy yourself.” But I think it’s that reverence and it’s that integrity that Italians are all about. And I wanted to bring some of that. I’m not crazy. I’m not out in left field someplace. I just think that there’s some attention that’s necessary and a reason why we do what we do.
As far as breaking the pasta in half, why is that a no-no?
Because the pasta has integrity, right? And, and that length is there for a reason, right? How you pick up the pasta is by twirling your fork. I think there’s a couple other things that people do. They forget to salt their water. I think that sometimes people take the pasta out of the water, put it on a platter and put the sauce on top, which is challenging also, just because of the amount of liquid that kind of pools up on the bottom of the platter. Things like that. Again, it all boils down to being a little bit more thoughtful and just kind of that reverence for the product itself.
Can you expand a little on the importance of salting the water?
Yeah. Well, that salt, I always say that when you salt the water, a lot of people say it should taste like the ocean. I think it depends on which ocean you’re talking about. But at the end of the day, if it’s tremendous, that could be too much salt. Because what happens with pasta is you’re putting the pasta inside that salted water, there’s that transfer of flavor and it helps season the pasta, clearly. I like to utilize that pasta cooking liquid, that pasta water, inside the sauces when I’m sautéing the pasta afterwards. So if it’s too salty, it’s going to reduce with that sauce and then make your dish overall too salty. So I like to season it so it tastes like a really good neutral broth. And if you season it the right way and you taste it and it has almost a broth-like saline content, that way you could utilize it for the sauces that you’re cooking as well.
Dining and Cooking