Easy Pasta Recipes

EASY PASTA RECIPES

 "THE IMPORTANCE OF QUALITY INGREDIENTS"

Easy pasta reipes is very important.Italians stress over and over the importance of using high-quality ingredients: the best possible pasta, top-quality olive oil, the freshest vegetables. It’s true that many quality ingredients are expensive—there’s no way around that. That’s one reason that this book contains dozens of recipes that put ingredients like beans and vegetables front and center—they don’t have to be super costly, even for the best quality.

Many chefs and home cooks observe that the more you cook, the more money you save on processed and prepared foods.

A few ingredients where quality really matters:

PASTA: Use only quality pasta. It is more expensive, but well worth it. Do a taste test comparing an artisan-made, imported Italian pasta to a bargain box and you’ll see: Boil a small quantity of each in separate pots, using exactly the same amount of water and salt. First, drain and take a whiff. Note that the better pasta has a fresh wheat aroma. Next, test the pasta’s ability to.. absorb sauce. Put a some strands of each into 2 different... bowls with a little water and after several minutes you’ll notice that the better pasta will have absorbed the water. Then pinch both types of pasta between your thumb and 'index' finger. The inferior pasta 'll be gummy to the touch and soft in the middle, while the better pasta stays al dente. Lastly, taste " each" pasta plain, with no sauce. That would be enough to convince you!

A few of my favorite artisanal pasta companies are: Benedetto Cavalieri, Felicetti, Garofalo, Giuseppe Coco, Rummo Lenta Lavorazione, and Rustichella d’Abruzzo.

When making homemade pasta, you can use all-purpose flour or the classic Italian pasta flour, “0” flour.

BREADCRUMBS: For the best results, use freshly made breadcrumbs. Save the ends, crumbs, and odd bits of crusty breads, oven-dry them until crisp, then grind them in a food processor or grate them with a cheese grater. They will keep in an airtight container for months. Then just before serving, re-toast the breadcrumbs you’ll need for a recipe in a pan with a few tablespoons of olive oil.

CHEESE: Use quality cheese. If a recipe calls for ricotta or mozzarella, try to find them freshly made. If it calls for aged cheese, like grana padano or Parmesan, choose a good-quality one with a nice grainy texture. Buy a whole piece of aged cheese and grate it just before use. This way, not only are you getting fresh quality cheese, but you also can vary how you grate it: Use the large holes on a cheese grater for nice chunky bits, a Microplane for fine, cloudlike tufts, or a vegetable peeler for thin slices of cheese.

There are hundreds of different types of wonderful aged cheeses, so try new types besides Parmesan. Visit cheese shops and ask for tastes. For robust sauces, try pecorino or caciocavallo cheeses from southern Italy.

BROTH: Homemade is best. I freeze all sorts of cooked and raw leftovers in plastic ziplock bags: bones and odd bits of meat, both raw and cooked, as well as veggies and herbs—stems, peelings, and cooked and uncooked leftovers. Then I boil up a batch of soup stock whenever I’ve accumulated enough. The stuff that comes in a can can’t compare!

TOMATOES: Many recipes call for fresh tomatoes, which ideally should be summer sweet and ripe. When using canned tomatoes, select those from a lined can or glass jar. There is a staggering, and sometimes confusing, variety of canned tomatoes available—whole peeled tomatoes, crushed tomatoes, diced tomatoes, tomato paste, strained tomatoes, and tomato puree. Some recipes in this book call for tomato puree, which should be smooth and not chunky. If the brand you selected is on the chunkier side, puree it in a blender or pass it through a food mill until smooth. Other recipes call for strained tomatoes (Pomi has a good version); it’s a thinner type of tomato puree, available in most American supermarkets. A great brand of strained tomatoes, also known as passato di pomodoro, is Alice Nero, which has superb vine-ripe fresh flavor and a very smooth texture.

OLIVE OIL: There are hundreds of brands, with a lot of variation in flavor. My advice is to taste olive oil before buying it to discover your favorites. Many specialty shops and markets offer tastings. Some olive oils are fruity, some are more vegetal, and some have a peppery aftertaste. The range is huge and exciting. Of the olive oils found in supermarkets, I personally like Colavita brand best, especially their Fruttato Extra Virgin Olive Oil, which has a fruity fragrance and nice bold flavor.

CAPERS: Buy salt-cured capers, not those packed in vinegar. The taste is brighter. The very best capers, large and full of flavor, come from the Sicilian islands of Pantelleria and Salina.

FRESH HERBS: If a recipe calls for fresh herbs, do not substitute dried. Buy herbs that are aromatic and remember that you might have to add more if they are out of season or left on the shelf or fridge for a while. Use all of the herb, including stems, which have lots of flavor. Rinse the bunch and then chop, starting at the top and continuing down, leaving out only the thickest ends and stems, which can be used for soups.

SPICES AND SALT: Use only freshly grated whole nutmeg and freshly ground black pepper. It makes a world of difference in taste and aroma. For the table or to garnish certain dishes like Pasta-Wrapped Shrimp you might like to try a pretty snowflake-like salt called flaked salt or one of the many types of specialty gourmet salts infused with smoke, red wine, or bits of truffles.

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