Hey, everybody! I’m reading the April editions of the cooking magazines that I receive, and they are, like last year, featuring the season’s first tender veggies and the ingredient we should have them with. It’s a food that doesn’t have a season but loves the spring crops. Plus, there’s lots of grocery store coupons this month for various brands, so I guess the magazines are right.
We’re having pasta!
Since we love pasta and can’t’ stop eating it, there are a lot of recipes that help us switch from the meaty, long simmered sauces of winter to fresh, lightly sauced recipes for spring.
It’s believed that central Asia is the first area to have produced noodles thousands of years ago, but Arabs brought forms of pasta —stringy dried dough—to Sicily during the 8th and 9th centuries, which later became the center for manufacturing pasta. It became available in dried forms, increasing its popularity, and by the 19th century, it achieved prominence in Italian cuisine.
Pasta’s an incredibly simple food—durum wheat flour or semolina, water, and sometimes eggs. Hard durum from Italy is said to be top-quality due to its high gluten content, which gives it the desirable al dente texture— “to the tooth or resistant to the bite.”
There are two pasta forming processes—Bronze vs. Teflon. Bronze is the traditional, artisanal approach, where pasta is formed by squeezing dough through bronze plates. It creates a rough surface texture, best for grabbing and absorbing sauces. Currently, most pasta makers use Teflon to squeeze out pasta. Teflon is a faster process, but it leaves pasta smooth with little surface for sauces to stick. Thus, bronze cut pasta has a superior sauce-hugging texture.
We have about 27 pasta shapes in four categories to choose from. You know the familiar ones:
- Small pastas, called macaroni, include farfalle (means butterfly or bowtie to us), rotini, and orzo.
- Ribbon-cut pasta includes spaghetti, vermicelli (means little worms), fettucine (means little ribbons) and lasagna.
- Tube-shaped pasta, where you may want these “bronzed,” include penne, rigatoni, ziti, and manicotti (usually baked after stuffing).
- And stuffed pasta—for holding stuff like cheese and meat include ravioli and tortellini.
Can I mention gnocchi here? Though it is often on the pasta section of menus, it is considered a dumpling, as its main ingredient is potato, not flour.
There’s lots of pasta and sauce options, but it’s spring, so the cooking magazines have the ideal recipe for you: pasta primavera. Primavera means spring in Italian, but it was created in the U.S. in the 1970s by an Italian. And who can resist an old school dish!
Pasta primavera can have any pasta shape, unified with spring veggies, like asparagus, peas, spring onions, zucchini, and cherry tomatoes, married with fresh herbs, light dressing, maybe some pecorino cheese. It only needs crusty bread and wine.
If primavera is not your thing, try something else that’s fun, delicious and healthy for a crowd—or one, or two—to enjoy the warm breezes and greenery that surrounds you. It’s also farmer’s market season so support your local farmers!
Join me next time, to find out what’s On the Menu.
Resources:
https://www.pbs.org/food/stories/uncover-the-history-of-pasta
https://pastaevangelists.com/blogs/blog/pasta-primavera
https://www.delallo.com/blog/history-of-pasta-wheat-water-patience/?srsltid=AfmBOoq3VDHgPwRE-4cnMqMvwwBIhdL3CueZr8vqVZ1WOeKq40Ltf5Hv
https://whatsfordinner.com/kitchen-tips/pasta-types-with-pictures/
