Extruded Pasta

"Life is a combination of magic and pasta" - Federico Fellini

Don’t let the name confuse you, this is the pasta you know and love. Penne, rigatoni, bucatini, the dry pasta on your supermarket shelves, for the most part is extruded. What does that mean? Quite simply, dough made of hard durum wheat (semolina) and water, is fed through dies at a high pressure, these dies give the pasta their shape and texture.

“Trafilata al bronzo” is often written on Italian pasta, meaning the dies used were made of bronze as opposed to brass or even worse teflon. Bronze dies leave pasta with a rough surface that sauce can cling to and releases more starch into the water while cooking creating a more potent pasta water for sauce building.

So how do you know which one to buy? Start with made in Italy, then be sure they’re actually using Italian grain. Once you’ve done that, let your eyes serve you. Good pasta should not be too yellow and smooth looking. Great pasta has a visible texture to it and an almost off white colour often giving off the impression that it’s shedding flour.

Some shapes will lend themselves better to certain sauces, better sauce clinging ability, more bite or different mouthfeel. That’s why you’ll find fifteen varieties of Penne for example; lisce, rigate, big, small and so on. With time you’ll see what works well for you. Familiarize yourself with a few brands you enjoy, as cuts (shapes) may be limited from producer to producer.

Salt your water well, like good soup and then add a little bit more. Don’t trust the cooking time, stay with your pasta, stirring often. When you’re two minutes away from the shortest suggested cooking time, start to taste the pasta. Strain it when it’s slightly less cooked than you prefer. Once strained and afterwards in the sauce, pasta will continue to cook, accounting for this and removing the pasta earlier will preserve the al dente you’re trying to achieve. Good quality pasta will stay al dente/ have good bite to it for a very long time and leaves huge margin for error. Entry level pasta tends to go from raw to overcooked very quickly so be mindful of that. Never rinse your pasta and don’t forget to keep your pasta water, starch is your friend.

Growing up in an Italian household, I’m of the belief that dry pasta is the best goddamn thing in the world. It showed up in many forms throughout my life, my mom’s penne with chicken cream sauce, baked rigatoni with meat sauce, Nonna’s sugo hiding braised treasures like meatballs, veal cubes, braciole, pork ribs and sausage served along side a bowl of orecchiette that could feed two. At home we had the hunk of parm and the cheese grater, Nonna always had a bag full of grated cheese ready to go. When i got my own apartment I must have eaten pasta five times a week, besides the fact that i love it, it’s so inexpensive and versatile. For a few dollars I had food that I actually wanted to eat, that was delicious, with enough for that night and lunch the day after. To me pasta is a blank canvas made of carbs, ready to be art, for your soul and stomach.