Big pan and lots of salty water on full boil. If the pan boils over, rest a wooden spoon across the top of the pan, stops the frothing.
And definitely save the salty water to add to the sauce after you've added the pasta, the pasta will continue to absorb liquid so serve slightly wetter so there's still some sauce left when you're down to the last few spoonfuls, and there's a piece of bread in your other hand waiting to wipe the bowl clean. Adding oil only inhibits the pasta from absorbing the moisture and flavour, it also explains the Bolognese sauce dribbled down the front of your shirt.
Unless on a budget, bronze die or fresh is a no-brainer
And did I say no cheese with seafood pasta? (With certain exceptions, pasta with prawns sauted in butter and pesto being one, sounds so wrong but tastes so yum...)
Oh yes, we had a wonderful prawn and pesto with little bits of chilli pasta dish in the US a couple of years back that has become a staple for us back at home.
And did I say no cheese with seafood pasta?
absolutly correct
Sounds good, I'll try it with bits of chilli next time, though probably saute the prawns in oil rather than butter. Sauteed in butter makes for a great comfort food dish, where I guess the chilli will give it a fresher vibe.
it's a good mix, the oiliness and creaminess of the pesto (and I think there's a bit of something creamy goes in with it too, maybe creme fraiche, will ask the wife) and then the chilli (dice to tiny 1-2mm cubes) adds a bit of bite through it.
Years ago some Italian colleagues were doing an Italian evening at work and drove miles to find pasta made from Semolina flour. Nothing else would do according to them. The food was sensational.
De cecco or M&S own brand, lots of salty water and ALWAYS put the pasta into the sauce, never the sauce onto the pasta
Aglio e Olio.Yum. Had it last night with black pepper and a few chilli flakes.
I never knew what it was called. Give me a minute, I'll post up my recipe.
[size=20]Spaghetti with Roasted Garlic and Oil[/size]
(or Spaghetti Aglio e Olio it seems, who knew)
INGREDIENTS
• 1 bulb of garlic
• 200g thin spaghetti
• 60ml good olive oil
• a pinch of red pepper / chilli flakes
• 40g pine nuts
• 25g bag fresh basil, finely chopped
• salt and fresh cracked pepper
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• Knob of butter
• grated cheese (the recipe I started this from suggested "Asiago"?)
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Slice the top off the garlic bulb, drizzle with olive oil, replace the top, wrap in foil and roast in the oven (200'C, 40-60 mins).
2. Simmer the spaghetti until just al dente.
3. Toast the pine nuts in the oven until golden brown, takes a couple of minutes. Remove and set aside.
4. Squeeze the roasted garlic out of the bulb and roughly chop.
5. Add the olive oil back in the same pan along with the lemon juice, butter, chilli flakes and garlic. Heat the oil to a sizzle, mashing the garlic with a fork or the back of a wooden spoon. Heat for a minute or two, but don't get it so hot that the garlic starts to toast or burn.
6. When the pasta is done, remove it with tongs directly into the hot oil and garlic. Toss well.
7. Add in the basil, add salt and pepper to taste. Stir well again.
Serve and optionally scatter with cheese to finish.
^ you were right the first time Cougar. That is 100% not Spaghetti Aglio e Olio. All the ingredients in Spaghetti Aglio e Olio are listed in its name.
😂 Fair enough. Ta.
Yes Aglio e Olio is simply sliced garlic warmed through in olive oil (not browned) and then spaghetti tossed into it. But I do like the sound of Cougar's, whatever it's called.
https://www.elizabethminchilli.com/2014/04/fettucine-anchovies-butter/
This is an amazingly simple, but very delicious recipe.
In lockdown 1 I got in the habit of making fresh pasta every Saturday for lunch, with aglio, olio e peperoncino, like this:
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017306-pasta-aglio-olio-e-peperoncino
It's always our staple pasta to share as a starter in Italy.
pothead
ALWAYS put the pasta into the sauce, never the sauce onto the pasta
Hmmm... not sure my saucepanfull of pasta will fit into the pesto jar?!
Pesto is a dressing really, not a sauce...
Pretty sure in Anthony Bourdain's book when he talks about learning to cook pasta properly in an Italian place in NY they would boil it in water until it had only softened slightly and then add it to the sauce to finish cooking it.
RustyNissanPrairie
Full Member
Tonights tuna (and sweetcorn) pasta bake is going to be epic!
Thanks STW
Has RNP resurfaced yet?
Why am I reading this now....feel like doing a tuna pasta with chilli pesto sauce...
Just checking in to make sure the infidels aren't still trying to get us to add oil to the water.
Proceed...
RustyNissanPrairie
Full Member
Tonights tuna (and sweetcorn) pasta bake is going to be epic!
Thanks STW
Has RNP resurfaced yet?
I'm here! I've just been thinking how to word my next question for the all knowing STW.
You know when you eat sweetcorn and look in the toilet after the following 'sit down session'.....
It's wording the next bit I'm struggling with but carry on with the pasta conversation - it's interesting
Easiest & most tasty pasta from knack all ingredients…
Finely chopped onion
A jar of anchovies
Pepper - lots of pepper
Sauté the onions, add anchovies and cook down to mush, add lots and lots of pepper then throw in some cooking water and some al dente bucatini
The sweetcorn often appears in the bowl in pristine condition..... nobody knows exactly why, it's something to do with Baby Jesus, aliens and long chain hydrocarbons 🤔
I like sweetcorn but I came to the conclusion years ago that it primarily exists as an excuse to eat butter.
Who needs an excuse? I can eat it off a spoon.
I put a tiny bit of oil in, stops the water foaming and boiling over
Big pan and lots of salty water on full boil. If the pan boils over, rest a wooden spoon across the top of the pan, stops the frothing.
Just checking in to make sure the infidels aren’t still trying to get us to add oil to the water.
Proceed…
There seems to be a lot of confusion over even the basics, the easy way we cook pasta, no need for oil or worry about it boiling over for the whole time...
Bring a large pan of water to the boil, add lots of salt, add pasta bring back to boil. Cook at a rolling boil for 1 minute, remove from heat give it a quick stir, place a tea towel under lid (to seal), and let it rest for the amount of time suggested on the packet (minus 1 minute). Perfect pasta every time and no frothing/boiling over water or any need for oil.
Amateurs. 15 minutes in the microwave.
I put a tiny bit of oil in, stops the water foaming and boiling over
Or use a bigger pan.
and
Big pan and lots of salty water on full boil. If the pan boils over, rest a wooden spoon across the top of the pan, stops the frothing
Do people have e a problem with turning the heat down so that the water is simmering? Pasta doesn't tend to boil over any more than any other food stuff.
Years ago some Italian colleagues were doing an Italian evening at work and drove miles to find pasta made from Semolina flour. Nothing else would do according to them. The food was sensational.
We've got Sardinian friends who invited us over to their house for a meal when we were in Cagliari a few years ago. Basic dried pasta, with basic shop bought sauces. It was nice enough, but I can make better pasta dishes and I'm Welsh! 😀 The highlight was when Frederica asked if we wanted dessert and started telling us about the classic Italian dessert that she'd got for us. And then produced an actual Vienetta, to much amusement from me and my family. We didn't tell her that they cost £1 in Iceland!
Hmmm… not sure my saucepanfull of pasta will fit into the pesto jar?!
Put the pesto into another pan first then
...
to cook pasta properly in an Italian place in NY they would boil it in water until it had only softened slightly and then add it to the sauce to finish cooking it.
Put the pesto into another pan first then
The pasta onto sauce or sauce onto pasta is slightly besides the point I think. The key thing here is that the two are mixed together before going onto the plate/dish. This is about avoidance of the cardinal sin of UK 70-80's style "plate of spaghetti with a heap of meat sitting on top".
Cook at a rolling boil for 1 minute, remove from heat give it a quick stir, place a tea towel under lid (to seal), and let it rest for the amount of time suggested on the packet (minus 1 minute). Perfect pasta every time and no frothing/boiling over water or any need for oil.
Never heard this one before. It's almost as if someone has the basics of perfect rice cooking down and is trying to apply a similar technique to pasta! The "lots of water" part of the Italian golden rules of lots of water, lots of salt, is there so that your pasta has lots of room to move around freely while boiling to avoid clagging together. Taking off the heat so the pasta is not moving around seems distinctly sub-optimal.
Taking off the heat so the pasta is not moving around seems distinctly sub-optimal.
Agreed. (And it most definitely won't work for gluten free pasta.) What exactly is the tea towel sealing? Are we expecting the cooling water to escape? Will the pasta escape? It reads to me just like a Viz Top Tip from years ago - stop your bread from drying out by putting it in a bucket of water.
Putting oil in when boiling pasta is utterly pointless. No Italian does this. Its a myth. Anyone claiming that it achieves anything is wrong and deluded.
In general the British attempt at Italian cooking is a thinly veiled insult to Italian food - some of the hideous creations out there like the much bastardised 'spag bol' make most Italians want to vomit. Wrong ingredient's and wrong cooking method results in nothing like its supposed to be. Same goes for Pizza, from everything from the base to the tomato sauce - 99% the British get it so wrong its painful.
99% the British get it so wrong its painful.
Not really, if we like the stuff we make. We mainly aren't making it for Italians to eat so who cares what they think. Do we criticise the way they make chips? 😀
This is about avoidance of the cardinal sin of UK 70-80’s style “plate of spaghetti with a heap of meat sitting on top”.
Is that a wholly UK thing? I didn't know that.
I mix sauce and pasta before serving because doing it that ☝ way always seemed to result in the pasta sitting in an orange puddle on the plate.
99% the British get it so wrong its painful.
As Jon says, does it matter? As DIY cooks - and let's not kid ourselves, if we've progressed beyond a jar of Dolmio then we're already ahead of the curve compared to most tired mums and dads just trying to get something filling onto a plate at the end of a workday - are we striving to make something correct and authentic, or tasty and enjoyable?
British cuisine, like pretty much everything else we do, is a bastardised mongrel fusion of other cultures that we've made our own. Discussions like this are really interesting, I would love to be able to make an authentic Italian pizza or a Bangladeshi curry, but then I'd use that as a starting point to concoct something we preferred more.
Do we criticise the way they make chips?
Probably.
"Pretty sure in Anthony Bourdain’s book when he talks about learning to cook pasta properly in an Italian place in NY they would boil it in water until it had only softened slightly and then add it to the sauce to finish cooking it."
This is the key! Completely transformed my pasta dishes. This way the sauce gets absorbed into the pasta, it doesn't just coat it (although that is still better than the old British way of piling bolognese on top of bare spaghetti!)
"This is the key! Completely transformed my pasta dishes. This way the sauce gets absorbed into the pasta"
Yup, the ability to absorb things is the defining quality of pasta.
Adding oil before the sauce is like coating the pasta with anti-climb paint.
boil it in water until it had only softened slightly and then add it to the sauce to finish cooking it.”
This is the key! Completely transformed my pasta dishes. This way the sauce gets absorbed into the pasta,
This is what I meant by pasta into the sauce, finish the cooking in the sauce for a couple of mins and not just mix the 2 together when the pasta is done
