One of Italy’s most popular and beloved dishes by people worldwide is the Pasta. Pasta or spaghetti is a dish that can be made simply with delicious flavors yet can also be made very complex.
In general, spaghetti is a variant of pasta that has a thin and dense cylindrical shape. Spaghetti is made from processed wheat which has long been a staple food for the people of Italy, even Europe and America. This pasta is served with various types of spaghetti sauce recipes.
Here we will explain about pasta itself and provide a guide on cooking pasta with authentic Italian flavors.
What Is Pasta?
Many people are familiar with Pasta, but many mistakenly confuse it with Spaghetti despite their different shapes. Pasta is a food made from flour and water formed into various types of pasta shapes found worldwide. The flour used is wheat flour mixed with water, formed, and finally topped with sauce to add flavor.
Most Italian chefs will refer to good pasta as homemade pasta because it’s undoubtedly fresher. The texture of good pasta is slightly coarse and needs to be chewed first to release its flavor. This coarse texture helps the pasta absorb sauce and allows the flavor to penetrate perfectly into the pasta.
The flavor of pasta itself emerges excellently in the mouth when chewed properly first, thus requiring a coarse texture. Additionally, it should not be too watery because if it’s too thin, people tend to swallow it without chewing. The unique Italian taste is indeed remarkable because it can turn simple ingredients into delicious dishes.
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Types of Pasta
Pasta actually comes in several types distinguished by the shape of the pasta dough, which ultimately affects its taste. Here we will explain some types of pasta found worldwide that you can try making at home.
1. Fusilli
Fusilli is a type of pasta with a unique and easily recognizable spiral shape. This type is usually paired with carbonara sauce or tomato sauce with added cheese to enhance its creamy texture.
2. Spaghetti
Spaghetti is the most popular pasta shape in the world, with its long straight shape resembling a string. This shape aligns with the meaning of Spaghetti in Italian, which is “string,” and it’s the most commonly found shape worldwide. Typically, this type of pasta is paired with bolognese sauce, sweet and sour, savory with minced meat sprinkled on top.
The Spaghetti pasta type also has several variants, namely Spaghettini, Spaghettoni, and Alla Chitarra. The difference between each variant is minimal, with variations only in the thickness of each pasta size.
3. Penne
Penne is also one of the most commonly found pasta types worldwide, known for its unique yet simple shape. The Penne shape itself is straight with holes at both ends and usually short in size. The pasta dishes produced from this type vary from the simplest like Aglio Olio to complex Creamy Penne Pasta.
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4. Macaroni
Macaroni is a type of pasta familiar in some parts of the world, with its short curved shape with holes at both ends. Its shape is simple yet capable of absorbing sauce well, allowing the pasta flavor to be well-distributed. The most commonly used preparations for this type of pasta are Bolognese or creamy cheese with added minced meat.
5. Fettuccine
Fettuccine is a type of pasta resembling noodles found in various parts of the world with a flat and wide shape. However, Fettuccine has a relatively thin thickness but a wide enough surface for the size of noodles commonly found worldwide. Almost every pasta dish can use this type of Fettuccine as it’s very capable of absorbing pasta sauce.
The wide surface of Fettuccine requires people to chew it well before swallowing. This helps the pasta convey its flavor better to the palate.
6. Linguine
Finally, there’s Linguine, which resembles flat noodles with a long but thin and flat shape. Its surface is wide but not as wide as Fettuccine, and its thickness is not as thin as Fettuccine either. Its shape is consistent with its name, which means “tongue” in Italian.
There are several variants of Linguine, including trenette, radichini, and bavette fini, with various pasta preparations that can be made.
Tips for Cooking Authentic Italian Flavored Pasta
Pasta can be considered a simple and straightforward dish, but there are some key factors that make pasta delicious. Here are some tips for producing pasta with authentic Italian flavor often shared by Italian chefs.
1. Make Your Own Pasta
Make your own pasta, so you can make truly high-quality pasta with the right mix of flour and water. Besides the composition, another important key to making your own pasta is resting; make sure there is resting time after shaping. This greatly affects the final result of the pasta; sufficient resting time will make the quality of the pasta better.
2. Ensure Pasta is Cooked Al Dente
The pasta cooking process must be precise, where you should cook the pasta until you achieve an Al Dente texture. Basically, cooking pasta should reach 80% cooked, not less and not more, to achieve this Al Dente texture.
3. Slightly Coarse Texture
Make sure the texture of the pasta you make is slightly coarse, so it can absorb the sauce you will mix in properly. Additionally, a slightly coarse texture will encourage those who eat it to chew it well before swallowing. This chewing process will deliver the complex flavors of the pasta to the eater’s palate.
4. Sauce
The sauce is a crucial key that determines the taste of the pasta itself, where there are many sauce variants that can be made. Starting from the simplest like Aglio Olio to Carbonara or Bolognese or Creamy Cheese, which are very popular worldwide. Place the pasta in the pre-cooked sauce and mix until the sauce is fully absorbed by the pasta.
To ensure that the sauce is absorbed properly, the texture of the sauce itself cannot be too thin when served. So people can enjoy pasta better when the sauce texture is thicker, and that’s the key to delicious sauce for pasta.