How to cook an italian pasta ("pastasciutta")

Non Recently I went to the cinema to see an italian movie called "Quo Vado". It's a funny one made by an italian actor, Checco Zalone.

In a scene he is in Norway (Bergen) having a dinner in an italian restaurant, and the owner explain, in a TOTALLY WRONG WAY, how to cook spaghetti.

This brought me to the conclusion that there is lot of confusion around the method to prepare an italian pasta.

Basically all you need is a pot, some water and salt: that's it. But....how?

First of all take care about water: for 500g of pasta 5L of water are enough, but not less (remembet that it will evaporate decreasing its volume)

Now, put it on fire and wait until it will boil, then add the salt (possibly coarse salt, what we call in italian "sale grosso", the one with big grains) and sit down another 5 minutes, the time that the water needs to boil again.

Did you add salt? Is it boiling? Perfect, now it's the time to add pasta.

You can choose your favourite size and format (penne, maccheroni, spaghetti, linguine, fusilli, bucatini) but following exactly these easy steps.

No salt? Wrong: you need to correct your pasta before adding seasoning...

Never wait for water boiling? Wrong: if the water is cold or not enough hot the risk is that your pasta will taste of...nothing!

There is another cooking method that consist in following the "risotto" steps, but being this harder and not so frequently used I will explain it later in a separate post.

#lovepasta