P a s t a
October 27, 2023 9:36 PM Subscribe
A very long article in the Atlantic: An inquiry into a few fundamental questions: How did spaghetti and meatballs, a dish no Italian recognizes, become so popular here? What makes some brands of pasta much better than others? What’s so special about fresh pasta? What do Italians know about cooking pasta that Americans don’t? (archive)
Fun stuff so far! I like the vast scope and what seems like deep and broad research.
Just now I got here:
Thomas Jefferson is credited with introducing dried pasta without egg to America, but, like the Marco Polo legend, this is a romantic fiction.
Yes, but he does seem to have been a big proponent, and responsible for a good bit of the uptake. I was hoping they'd mention that Jefferson served macaroni and cheese at the White House, which is fun to picture.
posted by SaltySalticid at 10:07 PM on October 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
Just now I got here:
Thomas Jefferson is credited with introducing dried pasta without egg to America, but, like the Marco Polo legend, this is a romantic fiction.
Yes, but he does seem to have been a big proponent, and responsible for a good bit of the uptake. I was hoping they'd mention that Jefferson served macaroni and cheese at the White House, which is fun to picture.
posted by SaltySalticid at 10:07 PM on October 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
Fuck Jefferson getting credit though, it was almost certainly James Hemings if it was introduced then, and he should get credit.
posted by Carillon at 10:19 PM on October 27, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by Carillon at 10:19 PM on October 27, 2023 [12 favorites]
We found a tiny place in Assisi where we could watch (from our table) various pastas made from scratch, the one pasta not covered in the article and that we saw being made was gnocchi [link to site of a Calabria cooking school I think]. My wife ocasionally makes this just as in that link - a palava, but magic watching these unlikely things puff up and rise to the surface, and their taste and texture is mmm. But it's basically wheat + potatoes.
We also saw some truly strange black pasta, a fusilli (I think) in Venice - it felt very in keeping with that city.
posted by unearthed at 11:03 PM on October 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
If you made a matrix of deliciousness versus ingredients, pasta would be an outlier of taking two things, one of them water and making something delicious. Only other thing I can think that rivals it would be cheese. Again Two things, rennet and milk. Transformative. Interesting that Italians mastered both.
posted by Keith Talent at 11:39 PM on October 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Keith Talent at 11:39 PM on October 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
Ugh. That archive link requires a capcha security check that gets stuck in a loop and never lets me in.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:36 AM on October 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Thorzdad at 2:36 AM on October 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
It works for me, Thorzdad.
We also saw some truly strange black pasta, a fusilli (I think) in Venice - it felt very in keeping with that city.
Indeed, since that would be squid ink pasta, to be eaten in a squid ink sauce, black on black.
I started reading this early in the morning, as I woke up because of the kids coming home very late from town. And then I had to go and heat up some pasta with a tomato sauce I had leftover in the fridge. I have to hold myself back from eating pasta every day, twice a day. It's my favourite food, I think. My favourite pasta is probably spaghetti alle vongole, which you can absolutely make with canned clams. But there are so many delicious options and they all fit to a certain mood and season. And most of them are really easy to make, and cheap.
Americans are not alone in their mistreatment of pasta: the French enjoy eating buttered egg pasta as a side, even with chicken!!! The horror! I don't know what is worse, pasta as a side or pasta with chicken. Both at the same time is just sad. (One can of course have pasta in a chicken broth, that's normal). And while in general I feel Greek cuisine is underrated, pastitsio seems weird to me, albeit not entirely horrible.
This from the article surprised me: Food science, a new discipline in the 1890s (entertainingly described in Laura Shapiro's recently published book Perfection Salad), declared that most fruits and vegetables, particularly green vegetables, were of little nutritional value and cost too much.. I have several old (European) cookbooks, and while some of the recipes are gross, they all seem to agree that you have to eat your vegs. Escoffier, in 1908, has 37 pages of vegetable recipes with 6-7 recipes per page, and more vegetable and fruit recipes listed under soups, stews and desserts. One of my favourite old Danish cookbook authors wrote a vegetarian cook book. Does anyone know about this, for instance because they read "Perfection Salad"?
posted by mumimor at 3:17 AM on October 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
We also saw some truly strange black pasta, a fusilli (I think) in Venice - it felt very in keeping with that city.
Indeed, since that would be squid ink pasta, to be eaten in a squid ink sauce, black on black.
I started reading this early in the morning, as I woke up because of the kids coming home very late from town. And then I had to go and heat up some pasta with a tomato sauce I had leftover in the fridge. I have to hold myself back from eating pasta every day, twice a day. It's my favourite food, I think. My favourite pasta is probably spaghetti alle vongole, which you can absolutely make with canned clams. But there are so many delicious options and they all fit to a certain mood and season. And most of them are really easy to make, and cheap.
Americans are not alone in their mistreatment of pasta: the French enjoy eating buttered egg pasta as a side, even with chicken!!! The horror! I don't know what is worse, pasta as a side or pasta with chicken. Both at the same time is just sad. (One can of course have pasta in a chicken broth, that's normal). And while in general I feel Greek cuisine is underrated, pastitsio seems weird to me, albeit not entirely horrible.
This from the article surprised me: Food science, a new discipline in the 1890s (entertainingly described in Laura Shapiro's recently published book Perfection Salad), declared that most fruits and vegetables, particularly green vegetables, were of little nutritional value and cost too much.. I have several old (European) cookbooks, and while some of the recipes are gross, they all seem to agree that you have to eat your vegs. Escoffier, in 1908, has 37 pages of vegetable recipes with 6-7 recipes per page, and more vegetable and fruit recipes listed under soups, stews and desserts. One of my favourite old Danish cookbook authors wrote a vegetarian cook book. Does anyone know about this, for instance because they read "Perfection Salad"?
posted by mumimor at 3:17 AM on October 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
Alex Aïnouz - a.k.a. "Alex The French Guy Cooking" on Youtube - has a whole video series where he does a similar deep dive into dried pasta. He visits a couple of Italian pasta factories, discusses why dried is better than fresh in some recipes, and even attempts to make a pasta-drying machine in his studio (it doesn't work). One of his videos also is a comparison-review of various commercial brands of pasta (I've been opting for De Cecco brand where possible ever since).
The Rancho Gordo company republished a beans-in-Italian-cooking cookbook this spring, and leaned heavily into some of the beans therein for the bean club sampler in May; I got a copy of the book and have been heavily using it for various beans-with-pasta recipes as of late, especially since (according to the book, at least) a couple of the recipes were created as catch-alls to use up the random odds-and-ends of things hanging around. One thing I've made a couple times recently uses a few broken-up lasagna sheets as the pasta part, and the bean part is just a half cup of cooked cannellini tossed into some cooked bacon bits with a little red pepper flakes.
I feel like you can plop just about anything on top of pasta and call it good - it's probably not authentically Italian in the sense that various nonnas have been making it forever - but on the other hand, those various nonnas were probably once young women trying to stretch some resources really thin and trying to feed a lot of people, so they may very well have thought "shit, I can plop anything on top of pasta and call it good, lemme just improvise here" and so it's the same instinct. And you can find that instinct amongst any culture's nonnas and grand-meres and abuelitas and babcias and bubbes and omas and obaasans and....
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:04 AM on October 28, 2023 [13 favorites]
The Rancho Gordo company republished a beans-in-Italian-cooking cookbook this spring, and leaned heavily into some of the beans therein for the bean club sampler in May; I got a copy of the book and have been heavily using it for various beans-with-pasta recipes as of late, especially since (according to the book, at least) a couple of the recipes were created as catch-alls to use up the random odds-and-ends of things hanging around. One thing I've made a couple times recently uses a few broken-up lasagna sheets as the pasta part, and the bean part is just a half cup of cooked cannellini tossed into some cooked bacon bits with a little red pepper flakes.
I feel like you can plop just about anything on top of pasta and call it good - it's probably not authentically Italian in the sense that various nonnas have been making it forever - but on the other hand, those various nonnas were probably once young women trying to stretch some resources really thin and trying to feed a lot of people, so they may very well have thought "shit, I can plop anything on top of pasta and call it good, lemme just improvise here" and so it's the same instinct. And you can find that instinct amongst any culture's nonnas and grand-meres and abuelitas and babcias and bubbes and omas and obaasans and....
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:04 AM on October 28, 2023 [13 favorites]
Have not delved yet but the photo at the beginning... Just back from a long stay with a family expat and was lectured in detail that no one uses a spoon to spin spaghetti (only german tourists:-) and can confirm that a spoon is rarely included in a place setting at restaurants. All of which amused me.
posted by sammyo at 5:06 AM on October 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by sammyo at 5:06 AM on October 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
Thorzdad, a different archive link might work for you.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 5:53 AM on October 28, 2023
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 5:53 AM on October 28, 2023
Americans are not alone in their mistreatment of pasta
I expect you're good-naturedly joshing in the way that people do about food (see: barbecue wars), but:
It's fine for other peoples to take pasta and do stuff with it that Italians wouldn't. Just like it's fine for Italians to take tomatoes or chilis and do stuff with them that the Mexica didn't do, and fine for northern Europeans to take potatoes and use them in ways alien to Quechua peoples.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:28 AM on October 28, 2023 [18 favorites]
I expect you're good-naturedly joshing in the way that people do about food (see: barbecue wars), but:
It's fine for other peoples to take pasta and do stuff with it that Italians wouldn't. Just like it's fine for Italians to take tomatoes or chilis and do stuff with them that the Mexica didn't do, and fine for northern Europeans to take potatoes and use them in ways alien to Quechua peoples.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:28 AM on October 28, 2023 [18 favorites]
What this thread needs is some Charles Barsotti.
posted by y2karl at 6:38 AM on October 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by y2karl at 6:38 AM on October 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
GCU Sweet and Full of Grace, I totally agree. Authenticity is a silly concept and irony doesn't really work on the internet, but I never give up trying.
But, while I have always found the various food police hilarious, there is an aspect to it I can recognise in myself and others, which I guess is why those food fights are so fascinating to many, wether they jump into the law-enforcement-roles, want to help or are just amused on the sidelines.
I looked up the recipe for the Spaghetti alla Primavera mentioned in the article, and it does look rather unpleasant bordering on disgusting to me, I wonder why, and I can feel the urge to tell others they shouldn't eat it. But then I realise how I feel about that in real life, when people tell others what to enjoy or not and it is so often racist and/or classist. Obviously it is perfectly fine that others enjoy things I don't.
(I do fight against the food industry with all I've got, but that's another story)
posted by mumimor at 6:57 AM on October 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
But, while I have always found the various food police hilarious, there is an aspect to it I can recognise in myself and others, which I guess is why those food fights are so fascinating to many, wether they jump into the law-enforcement-roles, want to help or are just amused on the sidelines.
I looked up the recipe for the Spaghetti alla Primavera mentioned in the article, and it does look rather unpleasant bordering on disgusting to me, I wonder why, and I can feel the urge to tell others they shouldn't eat it. But then I realise how I feel about that in real life, when people tell others what to enjoy or not and it is so often racist and/or classist. Obviously it is perfectly fine that others enjoy things I don't.
(I do fight against the food industry with all I've got, but that's another story)
posted by mumimor at 6:57 AM on October 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
Why am I spotting grocer's apostrophes in an Atlantic article? Some sort of meta joke?
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 6:57 AM on October 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 6:57 AM on October 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
I am literally on a plane on the way home from two weeks in Italy. We tried not to overdo it, but inevitably ended up having pasta for lunch or dinner several times. The one outstanding observation for me was that my notion of al dente has been way off. The pasta we had, everywhere we had it, was so much less cooked than any pasta I have ever had anywhere in the States. It was more than "toothsome" by a fair degree.
posted by briank at 7:06 AM on October 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by briank at 7:06 AM on October 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
Thorzdad, check your DNS settings. The archive sites don't work for anyone using CloudlFlare DNS (1.1.1.1).
posted by tommasz at 7:09 AM on October 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by tommasz at 7:09 AM on October 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
I never understood how the fork/spook method was supposed to work. Every time I tried it just seemed to make a mess.
I do find it fascinating how much anti-Italian bigotry was a factor in so many early efforts at human science basically turning into just another way to express bigotry. Anthropologists measured Italian skulls and declared that their totally not at all phrenology proved Italians were criminally minded inferior sub-humans. And now I learn early nutritional scientists were so moved by bigotry that they declared green vegetables to be utterly worthless and of no nutritional value whatsoever. I mean, damn.
Anthropology has been trying to acknowledge its bad past and improve. But given the food pyramid, the giant payoffs from big sugar, etc I suspect nutritional science hasn't actually learned the lessons if its past failure to be a real science.
As for pasta, I think no discussion of pasta and its history as an 'exotic' and weird foreign thing should go by without linking to the BBC's brilliant prank of convincing British people they could plant pasta to grow pasta bushes. Though for some reason they only mentioned the vast Italian pasta plantations in passing to focus on the small family crops raised by the Swiss.
posted by sotonohito at 7:10 AM on October 28, 2023 [7 favorites]
I do find it fascinating how much anti-Italian bigotry was a factor in so many early efforts at human science basically turning into just another way to express bigotry. Anthropologists measured Italian skulls and declared that their totally not at all phrenology proved Italians were criminally minded inferior sub-humans. And now I learn early nutritional scientists were so moved by bigotry that they declared green vegetables to be utterly worthless and of no nutritional value whatsoever. I mean, damn.
Anthropology has been trying to acknowledge its bad past and improve. But given the food pyramid, the giant payoffs from big sugar, etc I suspect nutritional science hasn't actually learned the lessons if its past failure to be a real science.
As for pasta, I think no discussion of pasta and its history as an 'exotic' and weird foreign thing should go by without linking to the BBC's brilliant prank of convincing British people they could plant pasta to grow pasta bushes. Though for some reason they only mentioned the vast Italian pasta plantations in passing to focus on the small family crops raised by the Swiss.
posted by sotonohito at 7:10 AM on October 28, 2023 [7 favorites]
(Here's a Share link (in beta, because The Atlantic) that might work.)
posted by box at 7:12 AM on October 28, 2023
posted by box at 7:12 AM on October 28, 2023
...The pasta we had, everywhere we had it, was so much less cooked than any pasta I have ever had anywhere in the States. It was more than "toothsome" by a fair degree.
Mamma Mia! - they must have some rough walls at which to throw a noodle.
posted by y2karl at 7:15 AM on October 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
Mamma Mia! - they must have some rough walls at which to throw a noodle.
posted by y2karl at 7:15 AM on October 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
I was somewhat surprised on reading this not to see reference to e.g. being able to see pasta factories on YouTube (I second Empress Callipygos's recommendation for Alex French Guy Cooking's dried pasta series), but then I noticed the data on the article. It's from 1986, and thus closer to the invention of the modern powdery-crumbly parmesan from 40kg wheels and tiramisu than it is to the current day.
So some things have changed, probably quite a lot, but it's nice to see how much hasn't.
posted by ambrosen at 7:27 AM on October 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
So some things have changed, probably quite a lot, but it's nice to see how much hasn't.
posted by ambrosen at 7:27 AM on October 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
Americans are not alone in their mistreatment of pasta: the French enjoy eating buttered egg pasta as a side, even with chicken!!! The horror! I don't know what is worse, pasta as a side or pasta with chicken. Both at the same time is just sad. (One can of course have pasta in a chicken broth, that's normal). And while in general I feel Greek cuisine is underrated, pastitsio seems weird to me, albeit not entirely horrible.
I can't even share pretend outrage; I've happily eaten buttered egg pasta as a side dish many, many times, with chicken and without. I seldom encounter it now unless I am cooking it myself, but I remember it being more common when I was young. Probably that was just because at that age my mother and the mothers of all my friends were trying to stretch food on tight budgets, and a big pile of egg noodles costs very little and goes a long way in feeding kids. I recall the egg noodles being served with dishes like "chicken ala king" (chicken in white sauce, basically) which were themselves ways of stretching out leftover chicken.
I'm not a big fan of the performative versions of mac and cheese (where increasingly absurd amounts and types of meat and other stuff are added on top) that I still see on menus frequently. Twenty years from now, I expect and hope we will see less of these.
I'm all for fun pseudo-arguments about "authenticity," but I just want to always stake out the position of multiple authenticities at play. Yes, the Italian regional pasta is authentic, but so is American red-dish pasta within its tradition, and so is Filipino hot dog spaghetti, and so on.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:50 AM on October 28, 2023 [5 favorites]
I can't even share pretend outrage; I've happily eaten buttered egg pasta as a side dish many, many times, with chicken and without. I seldom encounter it now unless I am cooking it myself, but I remember it being more common when I was young. Probably that was just because at that age my mother and the mothers of all my friends were trying to stretch food on tight budgets, and a big pile of egg noodles costs very little and goes a long way in feeding kids. I recall the egg noodles being served with dishes like "chicken ala king" (chicken in white sauce, basically) which were themselves ways of stretching out leftover chicken.
I'm not a big fan of the performative versions of mac and cheese (where increasingly absurd amounts and types of meat and other stuff are added on top) that I still see on menus frequently. Twenty years from now, I expect and hope we will see less of these.
I'm all for fun pseudo-arguments about "authenticity," but I just want to always stake out the position of multiple authenticities at play. Yes, the Italian regional pasta is authentic, but so is American red-dish pasta within its tradition, and so is Filipino hot dog spaghetti, and so on.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:50 AM on October 28, 2023 [5 favorites]
I see your Charles Barsotti and raise you one Big Night.
posted by doctornemo at 8:00 AM on October 28, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by doctornemo at 8:00 AM on October 28, 2023 [4 favorites]
Lovely article. Thank you for posting, ShooBoo.
posted by doctornemo at 8:01 AM on October 28, 2023
posted by doctornemo at 8:01 AM on October 28, 2023
Is the whole "Italians hate chicken and pasta" thing real, or just something a handful of obnoxious terminally online Italians made seem like a much bigger deal than it really is? It seems to just utterly bizarre and arbitrary.
Though on the topic of bizarre and arbitrary I'm glad I was born after garlic and pasta stopped being seen as weird and gross foreign food by white Americans so they became available everywhere. However, since I was born in 1974, it wasn't until I was in my late teens before actual Parmesan cheese (nevermind imported parmigiano reggiano) became available anywhere but a few specialty stores and most of my childhood the best we could do was Kraft powdered "Parmesan" in those green cans. Which limited me to either buying canned "alfredo sauce" or just not having alfredo. Which, of course, terminally speakers for Italian food purity also freak out about on the internet because if the internet is for something other than cat pictures it's for people arguing passionately about totally pointless things.
Still and all, one of the nicer developments of increased international travel and trade has been people worldwide getting a broader palate and food experience. And better and more varied ingredients becoming available without having to go to specialty stores that, if you're lucky, exist only in large cities.
posted by sotonohito at 8:04 AM on October 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
Though on the topic of bizarre and arbitrary I'm glad I was born after garlic and pasta stopped being seen as weird and gross foreign food by white Americans so they became available everywhere. However, since I was born in 1974, it wasn't until I was in my late teens before actual Parmesan cheese (nevermind imported parmigiano reggiano) became available anywhere but a few specialty stores and most of my childhood the best we could do was Kraft powdered "Parmesan" in those green cans. Which limited me to either buying canned "alfredo sauce" or just not having alfredo. Which, of course, terminally speakers for Italian food purity also freak out about on the internet because if the internet is for something other than cat pictures it's for people arguing passionately about totally pointless things.
Still and all, one of the nicer developments of increased international travel and trade has been people worldwide getting a broader palate and food experience. And better and more varied ingredients becoming available without having to go to specialty stores that, if you're lucky, exist only in large cities.
posted by sotonohito at 8:04 AM on October 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
I never understood how the fork/spook method was supposed to work. Every time I tried it just seemed to make a mess.
It works just like twirling against your plate. The advantage is that you can bring your fork to horizontal without a transition phase where the pasta could slip off or start to unwind.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:29 AM on October 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
It works just like twirling against your plate. The advantage is that you can bring your fork to horizontal without a transition phase where the pasta could slip off or start to unwind.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:29 AM on October 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
oh I love pasta. its all of its forms. I love Italy, and have been surprised and delighted by the utter varieties of dishes served with a noodle. ravioli in a walnut sauce, pasta with fresh green peas and saffron.
the only 'rule' Italians have about meals, from my take-away, having a handful of friends in Italy, is you don't put more than 2 or maaaaybe 3 ingredients in a dish, you keep it simple.
now I want pasta. can I have noodles for brekkie?
posted by supermedusa at 8:37 AM on October 28, 2023 [5 favorites]
the only 'rule' Italians have about meals, from my take-away, having a handful of friends in Italy, is you don't put more than 2 or maaaaybe 3 ingredients in a dish, you keep it simple.
now I want pasta. can I have noodles for brekkie?
posted by supermedusa at 8:37 AM on October 28, 2023 [5 favorites]
I'm all for fun pseudo-arguments about "authenticity,"
It's only authenticity if it comes from the Authentik region of Cimmeria, otherwise it's just sparkling snobbery.
(sorry to have not fully gotten what you were cooking, mumimor; it's on me)
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:39 AM on October 28, 2023 [7 favorites]
It's only authenticity if it comes from the Authentik region of Cimmeria, otherwise it's just sparkling snobbery.
(sorry to have not fully gotten what you were cooking, mumimor; it's on me)
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:39 AM on October 28, 2023 [7 favorites]
That archive link requires a capcha security check that gets stuck in a loop and never lets me in.
If you’re on iOS, turn off private relay in settings.
posted by ellieBOA at 8:47 AM on October 28, 2023
If you’re on iOS, turn off private relay in settings.
posted by ellieBOA at 8:47 AM on October 28, 2023
I went down the pasta rabbit hole a few months ago. My impressions:
Martelli - https://martellifoods.com/product-category/pasta/artisan/
Martelli craft pasta is made by slowly kneading the best durum-wheat with cold water. The bronze-drawing gives the pasta a rough texture. It is then dried at a "low traditional temperature" (33-36°C) for about 50 hours
Morelli - https://morellipasta.com
Morelli’s traditional pasta is unusual as it includes the germ of the wheat in the pasta in order to create a beautifully flavored and highly versatile wheat pasta with a rich, nutty bite.
La Molisana - https://www.lamolisana.it
100% durum wheat semolina, pure air and fresh mountain water for authentic Italian pasta. The high protein content of 14% ensures firmness cooking
Rustichella d'Abruzzo - https://www.rustichella.it/
This flour with a high gluten content, mixed with pure mountain water, The drying process is carried out slowly at low temperatures, sometimes for as long as 50 hours at around 35/40 degrees
La Fabbrica della Pasta di Gragnano - https://www.fabbricadellapastadigragnano.com
mix only 2 ingredients, High Quality Durum Semolina & Water from the Natural Spring in Gragnano’s Mountains. The ingredients were then pressed through a Bronze Die and the pasta was dried in the town’s streets, under the sun!
Pastificio Lucia Garofalo - https://www.pasta-garofalo.com
Use first class semolina, produced from "Desert Durum" wheat from Arizona. The drying temperature for Pasta Garofalo varies between 40 degrees(in the first phase) and 80 degrees.
Seggiano - https://seggiano.com
UK company. Using premium, high density, 100% Tuscan organic durum wheat, cultivated in the untouched Orcia Valley of southern Tuscany. It's slow-dried at a low temperature for fantastic firm consistency and excellent flavour.
Fusco (a Colavita product) - http://www.pastacolavita.it/en/artisanal-pasta
Artisanal Pasta Fusco pasta begins from the heart of Molise, and it's manufacturing is based on tradition by mixing the best selected durum wheat semolina with pure water; bronze-drawing of the dough and slow-drying at low temperatures.
Pasta Marella - https://www.pastamarella.it
Made from durum wheat in the Apulian tradition. They only use bronze dies, static collection frames and the pasta is dried at a low temperature 37/38 degrees C
Pappardelle’s (Denver, CO) - https://pappardellespasta.com
We dry our long- and short-cut pastas at only 35°C. We monitor the drying process at set junctures throughout the 2 - 4 day drying period
Sogno Toscano (USA company) - https://sognotoscano.com
blah, blah
L’Ultimo Forno - private label of Ritrovo - https://ritrovo.com
made by Vero Lucano in Matera, they use Senatore Cappelli varietal flour and bronze casts and air dry in static cells at low temperatures
Pastificio Felicetti - https://www.felicetti.it
bronze die, industrial drying, family own firm,
Not recommended
Rummo - https://www.pastarummo.it
A test phase in which two chefs cook and taste pasta from each lot then measure its firmness with an instrument that replicates biting, the Dynamometer.
Rummo - (Amazon - $19/2400g, 5 pack) - (Walmart - $3.5/500g)
posted by davebarnes at 8:54 AM on October 28, 2023 [14 favorites]
Martelli - https://martellifoods.com/product-category/pasta/artisan/
Martelli craft pasta is made by slowly kneading the best durum-wheat with cold water. The bronze-drawing gives the pasta a rough texture. It is then dried at a "low traditional temperature" (33-36°C) for about 50 hours
Morelli - https://morellipasta.com
Morelli’s traditional pasta is unusual as it includes the germ of the wheat in the pasta in order to create a beautifully flavored and highly versatile wheat pasta with a rich, nutty bite.
La Molisana - https://www.lamolisana.it
100% durum wheat semolina, pure air and fresh mountain water for authentic Italian pasta. The high protein content of 14% ensures firmness cooking
Rustichella d'Abruzzo - https://www.rustichella.it/
This flour with a high gluten content, mixed with pure mountain water, The drying process is carried out slowly at low temperatures, sometimes for as long as 50 hours at around 35/40 degrees
La Fabbrica della Pasta di Gragnano - https://www.fabbricadellapastadigragnano.com
mix only 2 ingredients, High Quality Durum Semolina & Water from the Natural Spring in Gragnano’s Mountains. The ingredients were then pressed through a Bronze Die and the pasta was dried in the town’s streets, under the sun!
Pastificio Lucia Garofalo - https://www.pasta-garofalo.com
Use first class semolina, produced from "Desert Durum" wheat from Arizona. The drying temperature for Pasta Garofalo varies between 40 degrees(in the first phase) and 80 degrees.
Seggiano - https://seggiano.com
UK company. Using premium, high density, 100% Tuscan organic durum wheat, cultivated in the untouched Orcia Valley of southern Tuscany. It's slow-dried at a low temperature for fantastic firm consistency and excellent flavour.
Fusco (a Colavita product) - http://www.pastacolavita.it/en/artisanal-pasta
Artisanal Pasta Fusco pasta begins from the heart of Molise, and it's manufacturing is based on tradition by mixing the best selected durum wheat semolina with pure water; bronze-drawing of the dough and slow-drying at low temperatures.
Pasta Marella - https://www.pastamarella.it
Made from durum wheat in the Apulian tradition. They only use bronze dies, static collection frames and the pasta is dried at a low temperature 37/38 degrees C
Pappardelle’s (Denver, CO) - https://pappardellespasta.com
We dry our long- and short-cut pastas at only 35°C. We monitor the drying process at set junctures throughout the 2 - 4 day drying period
Sogno Toscano (USA company) - https://sognotoscano.com
blah, blah
L’Ultimo Forno - private label of Ritrovo - https://ritrovo.com
made by Vero Lucano in Matera, they use Senatore Cappelli varietal flour and bronze casts and air dry in static cells at low temperatures
Pastificio Felicetti - https://www.felicetti.it
bronze die, industrial drying, family own firm,
Not recommended
Rummo - https://www.pastarummo.it
A test phase in which two chefs cook and taste pasta from each lot then measure its firmness with an instrument that replicates biting, the Dynamometer.
Rummo - (Amazon - $19/2400g, 5 pack) - (Walmart - $3.5/500g)
posted by davebarnes at 8:54 AM on October 28, 2023 [14 favorites]
I've never been into pasta. If I want noodles give me ramen or pho or dan dan. I've had some good butternut squash ravioli. And I'll absolutely fuck with a lasagna. But most Italian pasta with tomato sauce I could take or leave. It's just not for me.
posted by downtohisturtles at 9:07 AM on October 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by downtohisturtles at 9:07 AM on October 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
can confirm the Rustichella d'Abruzzo (whole wheat is what I eat) is incredible!
posted by supermedusa at 9:09 AM on October 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by supermedusa at 9:09 AM on October 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
Italian pasta with tomato sauce
that's the thing though! that is the mere tip of the iceberg. I have never eaten that in Italy and I never eat that at home, although I do have pasta about once a week. there are soooo many other ways to sauce up the noods.
posted by supermedusa at 9:10 AM on October 28, 2023 [4 favorites]
that's the thing though! that is the mere tip of the iceberg. I have never eaten that in Italy and I never eat that at home, although I do have pasta about once a week. there are soooo many other ways to sauce up the noods.
posted by supermedusa at 9:10 AM on October 28, 2023 [4 favorites]
Is the whole "Italians hate chicken and pasta" thing real, or just something a handful of obnoxious terminally online Italians made seem like a much bigger deal than it really is? It seems to just utterly bizarre and arbitrary.
Disgust is such a weird thing, and I can't pretend to understand it completely but as I understand it, it is mainly cultural and thus the common explanation makes sense:
In Europe, industrial chicken meat production didn't appear before the 1960s and even then it took a while to become a widespread convenience food. So for someone like me, born in 1963, roast or poached chicken was a mainly spring/early summer treat that was eaten when the male chickens were sorted out from the females, because they needed fewer males than females for egg production, which was the main feature of chickens. You absolutely couldn't go to the supermarket and buy a package of cheap chicken breast or wings or legs. That chicken that you either roasted or poached or braised would be used to its every last part. You would use leftovers for a salad, the liver and heart for crostini or something similar, and everything else for making stock, which you might preserve or make soup, or risotto or sauce out of. In Italy in particular, there are not as many recipes for poached or braised chicken as in France. I'm guessing that this is because the production was much smaller, because Italy was much poorer.
Obviously, you can hatch eggs and raise chickens all year round today, but back then before warm barns, it was best to do it during spring and summer.
In traditional Italian cuisine, pasta is mostly a "primo", a dish that is served before the main. There are some very important exceptions, like lasagne and various other versions of egg-pasta with ragu, but mostly, it is a thing that is eaten as a base before you get to the "secondo", which is often, but not always a meat or fish thing with which you have "contorni" (sides) that are mostly vegetables but can be roast potatoes. Parmigiana is an example of a vegetarian secondo. So in that context, "whole" chicken in whatever preparation would be part of the secondo, but you could have a chicken broth with tortellini as your primo. And chicken liver crostini as your antipasto.
Pasta is never ever a side in Italy.
One could ask why there is no chicken equivalent to beef ragu, but I am guessing again it is because there was not as many chickens available for butchering in Italy as in France whereas cattle and pigs were relatively abundant for wildly different reasons, and even that was regional. Maybe there is a point in the fact that Spaghetti Carbonara seems to be a post-ww2 thing. You don't see a ton of egg dishes in traditional Italian cooking, and most of them before ww2 are luxuries.
A soup hen, meaning a hen that is no longer useful for laying eggs, is a straggly thing that I wouldn't use for ragu. Maybe for meatballs? I haven't tried.
But then why the disgust? Well, a lot of us react with disgust to unfamiliar foods. To me, a Mid-Western hotpot sounds disgusting, and in general the amount of sugar in a lot of traditional American food is overwhelming.
posted by mumimor at 9:18 AM on October 28, 2023 [24 favorites]
Disgust is such a weird thing, and I can't pretend to understand it completely but as I understand it, it is mainly cultural and thus the common explanation makes sense:
In Europe, industrial chicken meat production didn't appear before the 1960s and even then it took a while to become a widespread convenience food. So for someone like me, born in 1963, roast or poached chicken was a mainly spring/early summer treat that was eaten when the male chickens were sorted out from the females, because they needed fewer males than females for egg production, which was the main feature of chickens. You absolutely couldn't go to the supermarket and buy a package of cheap chicken breast or wings or legs. That chicken that you either roasted or poached or braised would be used to its every last part. You would use leftovers for a salad, the liver and heart for crostini or something similar, and everything else for making stock, which you might preserve or make soup, or risotto or sauce out of. In Italy in particular, there are not as many recipes for poached or braised chicken as in France. I'm guessing that this is because the production was much smaller, because Italy was much poorer.
Obviously, you can hatch eggs and raise chickens all year round today, but back then before warm barns, it was best to do it during spring and summer.
In traditional Italian cuisine, pasta is mostly a "primo", a dish that is served before the main. There are some very important exceptions, like lasagne and various other versions of egg-pasta with ragu, but mostly, it is a thing that is eaten as a base before you get to the "secondo", which is often, but not always a meat or fish thing with which you have "contorni" (sides) that are mostly vegetables but can be roast potatoes. Parmigiana is an example of a vegetarian secondo. So in that context, "whole" chicken in whatever preparation would be part of the secondo, but you could have a chicken broth with tortellini as your primo. And chicken liver crostini as your antipasto.
Pasta is never ever a side in Italy.
One could ask why there is no chicken equivalent to beef ragu, but I am guessing again it is because there was not as many chickens available for butchering in Italy as in France whereas cattle and pigs were relatively abundant for wildly different reasons, and even that was regional. Maybe there is a point in the fact that Spaghetti Carbonara seems to be a post-ww2 thing. You don't see a ton of egg dishes in traditional Italian cooking, and most of them before ww2 are luxuries.
A soup hen, meaning a hen that is no longer useful for laying eggs, is a straggly thing that I wouldn't use for ragu. Maybe for meatballs? I haven't tried.
But then why the disgust? Well, a lot of us react with disgust to unfamiliar foods. To me, a Mid-Western hotpot sounds disgusting, and in general the amount of sugar in a lot of traditional American food is overwhelming.
posted by mumimor at 9:18 AM on October 28, 2023 [24 favorites]
Flagged as fantastic, mumimor!
posted by Gadarene at 9:46 AM on October 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Gadarene at 9:46 AM on October 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
sammyo, that is confusing especially as a kiwi who was shown how to to this by my Brazilian-Italian friend.
posted by unearthed at 11:38 AM on October 28, 2023
posted by unearthed at 11:38 AM on October 28, 2023
What this thread needs is some Charles Barsotti.
posted by y2karl
His collection Barsotti's Texas is a gold mine.
posted by neuron at 11:50 AM on October 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by y2karl
His collection Barsotti's Texas is a gold mine.
posted by neuron at 11:50 AM on October 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
In the early thirties Italy was appalled when F T. Marinetti, the founder of Futurist poetry and painting, published his Manifesto of Futurist Cuisine, which called for a ban on all pasta on the grounds that pasta was responsible for "the weakness, pessimism, inactivity, nostalgia, and neutralism" he saw all around him. Italians, who should be thin, the better to ride in "ultralight aluminum trains," should eat only rice as a starch.
Whenever I encounter Futurism, I'm struck by how neatly it manages to straddle the line, consisting simultaneously of authentically brilliant creative energy, obvious bugfuck lunacy, and dangerous cheerleading for fascism. AFAICT Marinetti himself was mostly the latter two, and it was other people, those he inspired, who had all the good ideas.
Like, you have brilliant work by Mina Loy and Umberto Boccioni and their ilk, and apparently all that great stuff was inspired by Marinetti's ridiculous "I drove on cocaine* and swerved to avoid a bicyclist" story.
* Fine, fine. He doesn't mention cocaine anywhere in the manifesto. But it's very much a "tell me you like cocaine without telling me you like cocaine" piece of writing.
posted by jackbishop at 12:12 PM on October 28, 2023 [5 favorites]
Whenever I encounter Futurism, I'm struck by how neatly it manages to straddle the line, consisting simultaneously of authentically brilliant creative energy, obvious bugfuck lunacy, and dangerous cheerleading for fascism. AFAICT Marinetti himself was mostly the latter two, and it was other people, those he inspired, who had all the good ideas.
Like, you have brilliant work by Mina Loy and Umberto Boccioni and their ilk, and apparently all that great stuff was inspired by Marinetti's ridiculous "I drove on cocaine* and swerved to avoid a bicyclist" story.
* Fine, fine. He doesn't mention cocaine anywhere in the manifesto. But it's very much a "tell me you like cocaine without telling me you like cocaine" piece of writing.
posted by jackbishop at 12:12 PM on October 28, 2023 [5 favorites]
I went down the pasta rabbit hole
How does one utilize a pasta rabbit?
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:26 PM on October 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
How does one utilize a pasta rabbit?
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:26 PM on October 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
A very long article
It's also very old, from the July 1986 issue.
Why am I spotting grocer's apostrophes in an Atlantic article? Some sort of meta joke?
My guess is they're errors that were introduced in the process of scanning the print version of the article to make the digital version.
posted by ultraviolet catastrophe at 1:31 PM on October 28, 2023
It's also very old, from the July 1986 issue.
Why am I spotting grocer's apostrophes in an Atlantic article? Some sort of meta joke?
My guess is they're errors that were introduced in the process of scanning the print version of the article to make the digital version.
posted by ultraviolet catastrophe at 1:31 PM on October 28, 2023
mumimor, it’s a while since I read Shapiro’s and Schenone’s several histories of food habits morphing in the US, but — round about 1890 to 1910 — there was a nascent science of cheaply keeping city people from starving. And no one had discovered vitamins yet. Hypothesis: the cheap shippable tasty calories didn’t include green veg at the time. Rural people of all ethnic backgrounds ate greens and vegetables. City people lived on… well, here’s a recent biographical essay:
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2023/10/erik-visits-an-american-grave-part-1467
posted by clew at 1:42 PM on October 28, 2023 [4 favorites]
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2023/10/erik-visits-an-american-grave-part-1467
posted by clew at 1:42 PM on October 28, 2023 [4 favorites]
Thanks a lot!
I've read about similar movements in some other countries, including my own, but they are all a bit later and include vegs, probably because of the discovery of vitamins.
posted by mumimor at 1:48 PM on October 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
I've read about similar movements in some other countries, including my own, but they are all a bit later and include vegs, probably because of the discovery of vitamins.
posted by mumimor at 1:48 PM on October 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
Rustichella d'Abruzzo
A big step up from De Cecco but also harder to find and more $$$. In particular, their orecchiette (little ears) are the best I've ever had. Cut and pressed into shape by hand and you can even see the thumbprint of the person who did the pressing. Outstanding texture! Try tossed with some sauteed broccoli rabe lightly fried garlic, julienne dried tomatoes, and red pepper flakes.
Also if you like baked pasta dishes, try the trenne, kind of like penne but with a triangular cross section. Again, incredible texture.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 3:19 PM on October 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
A big step up from De Cecco but also harder to find and more $$$. In particular, their orecchiette (little ears) are the best I've ever had. Cut and pressed into shape by hand and you can even see the thumbprint of the person who did the pressing. Outstanding texture! Try tossed with some sauteed broccoli rabe lightly fried garlic, julienne dried tomatoes, and red pepper flakes.
Also if you like baked pasta dishes, try the trenne, kind of like penne but with a triangular cross section. Again, incredible texture.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 3:19 PM on October 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
My paternal grandparents were Italian and Appalachian, and they did a Sunday ragu that kinda combined their heritages. Slow simmered chicken and dumplings, yum. Slow-simmered ragu with spaghetti, yum. Spaghetti with slow-simmered chicken in red sauce, cooked until it fell off the bone in shreds, so yum. This was the 70s in America, so of course they just used supermarket chicken. I still love chicken ragu and will make it from time to time, but it's not as good as what my grandparents made (of course).
posted by indexy at 3:26 PM on October 28, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by indexy at 3:26 PM on October 28, 2023 [5 favorites]
...grocer's apostrophes...
The original article in PDF format shows no apostrophe in the phrase "five million Italians" so how it showed up in the linked article is anyone's guess.
It's from 1986
This also explains the confusing claim that durum wheat wasn't raised in the USA until "this century" which threw me for a loop.
posted by St. Oops at 1:01 AM on October 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
The original article in PDF format shows no apostrophe in the phrase "five million Italians" so how it showed up in the linked article is anyone's guess.
It's from 1986
This also explains the confusing claim that durum wheat wasn't raised in the USA until "this century" which threw me for a loop.
posted by St. Oops at 1:01 AM on October 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
Me too, St. Oops.
Things have changed since then.
posted by mumimor at 3:48 AM on October 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
Things have changed since then.
posted by mumimor at 3:48 AM on October 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
Well, my mother was a recipe developer for an American pasta company back when I lived in the states in the last century, and I distinctly remember having a bin of durum semolina at home that was certainly not imported. If I recall correctly it was from a mill in Oregon. She and my dad spent months trying to make some kind of bread mix with that flour and that never went anywhere.
posted by St. Oops at 7:21 AM on October 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by St. Oops at 7:21 AM on October 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
Canada is the leading exporter of durum to Italy.
It exports so much that it regularly pisses of the Italians, resulting in trade disputes.
from The history of durum wheat breeding in Canada and summaries of recent research:
Durum wheat was introduced into western Canada in the late 19th Century, but the first variety developed in Canada, Stewart 63, was not released until 1963. Durum wheat production surged in the 1960s because of a stem rust epidemic in western Canada Durum wheat was less susceptible to stem rust than bread wheat varieties available at that time.
By today's standards Stewart 63 was poor quality. Gluten was weak, yellow pigment content was low, and pasta texture was poor
Durum wheat breeding programs select lines for quality solely on the basis of pasta-making potential, because pasta is the most important end product. Therefore, durum wheat baking potential has been an afterthought, which may, in part, explain why previous studies have consistently concluded that durum wheat baking quality is intrinsically inferior to bread wheat.
posted by yyz at 8:31 AM on October 29, 2023 [5 favorites]
It exports so much that it regularly pisses of the Italians, resulting in trade disputes.
from The history of durum wheat breeding in Canada and summaries of recent research:
Durum wheat was introduced into western Canada in the late 19th Century, but the first variety developed in Canada, Stewart 63, was not released until 1963. Durum wheat production surged in the 1960s because of a stem rust epidemic in western Canada Durum wheat was less susceptible to stem rust than bread wheat varieties available at that time.
By today's standards Stewart 63 was poor quality. Gluten was weak, yellow pigment content was low, and pasta texture was poor
Durum wheat breeding programs select lines for quality solely on the basis of pasta-making potential, because pasta is the most important end product. Therefore, durum wheat baking potential has been an afterthought, which may, in part, explain why previous studies have consistently concluded that durum wheat baking quality is intrinsically inferior to bread wheat.
posted by yyz at 8:31 AM on October 29, 2023 [5 favorites]
I had a hunch that I had once seen a duck ragu recipe, and though I haven't tried it myself, here is an online recipe. Now with duck season coming in, I think I will try it out.
Most traditional cuisines are about making the best of what you can get where you are, so it makes sense that they change when they are transplanted to other regions in the world. It would be stranger if they didn't.
The surge in Canadian Durum production makes a lot of things fall into place for me, because I've been wondering how so much OK pasta could be on the market if all the wheat had to be grown in Italy.
posted by mumimor at 9:05 AM on October 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
Most traditional cuisines are about making the best of what you can get where you are, so it makes sense that they change when they are transplanted to other regions in the world. It would be stranger if they didn't.
The surge in Canadian Durum production makes a lot of things fall into place for me, because I've been wondering how so much OK pasta could be on the market if all the wheat had to be grown in Italy.
posted by mumimor at 9:05 AM on October 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
Rabbit season.
posted by bowbeacon at 12:04 PM on October 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by bowbeacon at 12:04 PM on October 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
Do you happen to know what the penalty is for shooting a ragu-ing duck without a ragu-ing duck license?
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:48 PM on October 29, 2023
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:48 PM on October 29, 2023
So for someone like me, born in 1963, roast or poached chicken was a mainly spring/early summer treat that was eaten when the male chickens were sorted out from the females, because they needed fewer males than females for egg production, which was the main feature of chickens.
I always find comments like this very interesting, because food is so localized and experiences can be so different place to place, unless of course you are some kind of food researcher or historian. It's also very different at different income brackets.
So you can google various menus for cruise ships from the early 1900s, to see what foods were en vogue and generally available, and though unless you are a food historian, you have no idea what the ingredients and preparation processes are, you can get some idea of what they considered normal. And for the RMS Lusitania, you can see that they regularly had turkey meat in various forms - but not chicken, but IMO tastes pretty similar. So the modern concept chicken as a main was already in place in the early 1900s. As was spaghetti milanaise, which though it has many modern versions, so who could know exactly what they were cooking - seems to be a spaghetti noodle served with a sauce base that (contained tomatoes like a modern US sauce (or not) but tomatoes were generally available on the ship for salad) that contained sardines.
There are also many similar dishes to Americanized pasta sauces that contain various forms of meat, either ground, whole or sausage, (like chilli as a really close cousin) so it's not that hard to see the arc of history that created spaghetti and meatballs, and did it at least 100+ years ago.
You can go back even farther by checking things like US Presidential menus, like Abraham Lincoln in 1865, whose inaugural ball contained options for roast turkey and chicken, but no pasta surprisingly. So between 1865 and 1908, pasta became a more common food.
This guy has a bunch of historical menus - I'm sure if you had time you could identify when pasta became regularly available in that time period. I checked a few of the oldest- pasta still not featured in France in the 1840s and 1850s.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:31 PM on October 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
I always find comments like this very interesting, because food is so localized and experiences can be so different place to place, unless of course you are some kind of food researcher or historian. It's also very different at different income brackets.
So you can google various menus for cruise ships from the early 1900s, to see what foods were en vogue and generally available, and though unless you are a food historian, you have no idea what the ingredients and preparation processes are, you can get some idea of what they considered normal. And for the RMS Lusitania, you can see that they regularly had turkey meat in various forms - but not chicken, but IMO tastes pretty similar. So the modern concept chicken as a main was already in place in the early 1900s. As was spaghetti milanaise, which though it has many modern versions, so who could know exactly what they were cooking - seems to be a spaghetti noodle served with a sauce base that (contained tomatoes like a modern US sauce (or not) but tomatoes were generally available on the ship for salad) that contained sardines.
There are also many similar dishes to Americanized pasta sauces that contain various forms of meat, either ground, whole or sausage, (like chilli as a really close cousin) so it's not that hard to see the arc of history that created spaghetti and meatballs, and did it at least 100+ years ago.
You can go back even farther by checking things like US Presidential menus, like Abraham Lincoln in 1865, whose inaugural ball contained options for roast turkey and chicken, but no pasta surprisingly. So between 1865 and 1908, pasta became a more common food.
This guy has a bunch of historical menus - I'm sure if you had time you could identify when pasta became regularly available in that time period. I checked a few of the oldest- pasta still not featured in France in the 1840s and 1850s.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:31 PM on October 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
Edit: Oops I just missed it:
timbale de macaroni a la Milanaise was on the menu in France in 1842.
Again, who knows what they put in it, but the modern version is not that different from lasagna and contains meat and tomatoes.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:36 PM on October 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
timbale de macaroni a la Milanaise was on the menu in France in 1842.
Again, who knows what they put in it, but the modern version is not that different from lasagna and contains meat and tomatoes.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:36 PM on October 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
Answer in Progress: I made every pasta shape to prove a point
posted by creatrixtiara at 9:53 PM on October 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by creatrixtiara at 9:53 PM on October 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
Why does the woman in that video hate penne so much?
Also, one of my favorite (original, I think) jokes is: pasta and cheese: penne pals forever!
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:19 AM on October 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
Also, one of my favorite (original, I think) jokes is: pasta and cheese: penne pals forever!
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:19 AM on October 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
they regularly had turkey meat in various forms - but not chicken, but IMO tastes pretty similar. So the modern concept chicken as a main was already in place in the early 1900s.
Thanks for the fascinating links. But turkey is completely different from chicken. I used to call turkey pigs with wings because they are basically the same thing, raised on scraps for meat. Whereas chickens back in the day mainly existed for the eggs. Turkey is a leaner meat than chicken, and one turkey can provide many meals, like a piglet. I wonder if they brought live turkeys on those ocean liners, it would have made sense. But you really need to sauce them up to make them tasty, whereas a simple roast chicken is just lovely in itself.
Italian chefs adapted turkeys early on, in recipes that were formerly for veal or lean pork. But again, as secondi, the main dish, to be eaten with a vegetable side or roast potatoes, not pasta.
posted by mumimor at 7:53 AM on October 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
Thanks for the fascinating links. But turkey is completely different from chicken. I used to call turkey pigs with wings because they are basically the same thing, raised on scraps for meat. Whereas chickens back in the day mainly existed for the eggs. Turkey is a leaner meat than chicken, and one turkey can provide many meals, like a piglet. I wonder if they brought live turkeys on those ocean liners, it would have made sense. But you really need to sauce them up to make them tasty, whereas a simple roast chicken is just lovely in itself.
Italian chefs adapted turkeys early on, in recipes that were formerly for veal or lean pork. But again, as secondi, the main dish, to be eaten with a vegetable side or roast potatoes, not pasta.
posted by mumimor at 7:53 AM on October 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
I don't know, but the ships are large and isolated enough where you have to serve them some kind of industrialized process. Also, chickens are also raised on scraps for meat, they also breed very quickly so industrializing them made sense, even if it took modern farming processes to make them as ubiquitous as they are. The colloquial name is 'yard bird', so they were raised for meat as well as eggs on US farms.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:11 AM on October 31, 2023
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:11 AM on October 31, 2023
I made every pasta shape to prove a point
I feel like most of the questions raised and answers dug for in that video appear in a single book: Pasta by Design by George Legendre, which, among other things, classifies pasta by practical characteristics which make it clear which characteristics blend well with which sauces.
And, yeah, I don't get the penne hate either. Penne rigate (which is the usual variant people think of as "penne") are a perfectly stylish variation on rigatoni, good for chunky sauces with small bits that can crawl into those tubes. Penne lisce and ziti authentically suck, with their weirdly sauce-repellent smooth surfaces, but nobody's talking about penne lisce when they say "penne".
posted by jackbishop at 10:54 AM on October 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
I feel like most of the questions raised and answers dug for in that video appear in a single book: Pasta by Design by George Legendre, which, among other things, classifies pasta by practical characteristics which make it clear which characteristics blend well with which sauces.
And, yeah, I don't get the penne hate either. Penne rigate (which is the usual variant people think of as "penne") are a perfectly stylish variation on rigatoni, good for chunky sauces with small bits that can crawl into those tubes. Penne lisce and ziti authentically suck, with their weirdly sauce-repellent smooth surfaces, but nobody's talking about penne lisce when they say "penne".
posted by jackbishop at 10:54 AM on October 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
Really? I don't know about ziti, but I kind of miss penne lisce, that I never see in the wild anymore.
The only pasta I can think of that I don't like are the farfalle. They are impossible to cook right, and I have no idea what to use them for. I'm also not a fan of the fancy tri-color things. They don't look as nice when cooked, and they contribute with nothing. On the other hand, I have a plan to make my own spinach lasagne because they are elegant and fun.
posted by mumimor at 3:20 PM on October 31, 2023
The only pasta I can think of that I don't like are the farfalle. They are impossible to cook right, and I have no idea what to use them for. I'm also not a fan of the fancy tri-color things. They don't look as nice when cooked, and they contribute with nothing. On the other hand, I have a plan to make my own spinach lasagne because they are elegant and fun.
posted by mumimor at 3:20 PM on October 31, 2023
I think for me penne gets a bad rap because it's the one I most associate with shitty pasta buffets over like an alcohol warmer. Think little sauce, some sad chicken chunks, maybe a lightly warm tomato. It's easy to have it feel like unsauced, bland pasta, with bad ingredients mixed together.
posted by Carillon at 1:50 PM on November 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Carillon at 1:50 PM on November 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
Mod note: [btw, this post and several comments have been sauced and plated]
posted by taz (staff) at 2:54 AM on November 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by taz (staff) at 2:54 AM on November 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
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But thin...
*rimshot*
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:50 PM on October 27, 2023 [5 favorites]