No Chips FriesI have a 16 year old son and 19 year old daughter at home. Monday...
Question for O Gaggia Ice Cream MakerHi Everyone My question is directed at O but someone else may have an answer. My new Gaggia Gelatiera has arrived and looks OK (can't use it until...
June Hughes
OFF! If it is boiling furiously with enough water it will boil up and over with a lid on. Shall I be boring about pasta? OK. ;)) NO OIL in the water. It should boil furiously and be stirred the first moments before the boil gets hard enough to move the pasta around. TONS of WATER! Handful of salt. small hand Al dente is harder than almost anyone understands. It means biting into the pasta and when there is a microscopic line of white remaining, get it off the heat and into a colander immediately. NEVER RINSE. In most dishes, the pasta is thrown into the waiting sauce, stirred and cooked briefly so that it becomes homogeneous. You don't throw it at the ceiling or the wall, but learn what al dente feels like to the teeth. How would rotini ever stick to the wall? And why would you want mold encouraging starch on your wall? I cooked what I thought was al dente pasta for decades and then one evening ate at the home of a good Italian cook. It was a revelation and I could never turn back. For a pound of pasta at least 5 liters of furiously boiling salted water. More if your pot will hold it. When I stir it I can feel when it stops being like stirring bits of wood and starts feeling like bits of food. That's when I start biting it. The last rule is: pasta does not wait for people; people wait for pasta. It is served fumante, or smoking hot.
