The food lab better home cooking through science ( PDFDrive ) 828

Even Harold McGee, in a New York Times article in 2009, has mentioned the small-pot method of pasta cooking So what gives? Exactly what is the best way to cook, sauce, and serve pasta? In this chapter, we’ll get into all of that, along with discovering what I call the “mother sauces” of Italian-American cookery, the five simple sauces that form the base for countless variations: olive oil and garlic sauces, tomato sauces, pesto, cream sauces, and meat ragù But first, what exactly is pasta? { PASTA TRADITIONS } At its simplest, pasta is nothing more than flour and water mixed together to form a dough, cut into shapes, and cooked in boiling water As a food that has been made in China since the second century BC, in the Middle East since the ninth century, and Europe since at least the eleventh, it has one of the longest and most drawn out, and downright confusing, histories of any food around (though we can pretty safely say that Marco Polo did not play more than an apocryphal role in it) And that history is the realm of historians, not of cooks So why do I bring it up now? Only to illustrate my naiveté in telling my wife she was wrong for cooking it in a particular manner In fact, you hear all sorts of things coming from folks who claim to be direct descendents of Signore Polo or perhaps acquaintances with the Pope’s Personal Pasta Producer “Always use fresh, not dried,” or “Don’t add too much sauce,” or “Do not add oil to your water,” or (my favorite), “Add salt only after it comes to a boil,” often claiming tradition as the reason for doing so Well, guess what? You don’t need to listen to any of them Indeed, cooking pasta in a large amount of boiling salted water for a matter of minutes is a relatively modern method Prior to that, recipes called for cooking pasta for hours ... water mixed together to form a dough, cut into shapes, and cooked in boiling water As a food that has been made in China since the second century BC, in the Middle East since the ninth century,... ninth century, and Europe since at least the eleventh, it has one of the longest and most drawn out, and downright confusing, histories of any food around (though we can pretty safely say that Marco Polo did not play more than an... apocryphal role in it) And that history is the realm of historians, not of cooks So why do I bring it up now? Only to illustrate my naiveté in telling my wife she was wrong for cooking it in a particular