| Oct162007 | Pasta |
From Serious Eats: Mario Batali on the saucing of pasta
You probably saw this link posted earlier today but really it deserves mention on its own.
There is nothing I like more than properly cooked pasta with a delicate amount of sauce. I wish more people would learn this. I know, I know: tastes are subjective and people will eat how they damn well want but I enjoy the minimalism and the balance of pasta vs. sauce.
At home, my mother would overcook spaghetti into a soft doughy noodle. Then she’d drown them in sauce. A lot of the fast food eateries do the same. It’s the only way I knew how to enjoy pasta until I sat down at a restaurant in Lygon Street one day (Melbourne’s version of Little Italy) and ate a pasta sauced with about a teaspoon of pesto, a decent olive oil and some random pine nuts. It was weird and I thought I’d hate it but it was something that continued to grow on me long after I finished that meal.
Suddenly, pasta was more than just a vehicle for sauce. It wasn’t just empty carbs used to carry a sauce that was about as elegant as Campbell’s Chunky Tomato Soup. It was balance and something warm and light. It came only as a small surprise later when I read about how the serving sizes we enjoy outside of Italy are completely ridiculous by their standards. We gorge ourselves on mushy, potato-like starch drowned in cheap, fatty meat.
That being said, this is just my pretension talking. I’ve never been to Italy so I guess I won’t know for sure until I try it for myself. Or I find me a nice Italian girl.
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