The Dining Dish blog is Dara Bunjon's take on anything food, both national and in her hometown of Baltimore. Warning: this food blog can be harmful to your waistline.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Too much sauce - cooking pasta correctly


Do you drown your pasta? To truly appreciate pasta it should not be swimming in ragu, the sauce. I want to impart some pasta cooking tips.

1. Always cook your pasta in plenty of well salted boiling water.
2. Cook your pasta for ½ the time written on the box directions.
3. Reserve one cup of the of the pasta boiling water for each pound you make.
4. Use heated plates. If you put hot pasta and sauce on a cold plate the sauce will break, become watery. TIP: Put the colander on top of your dinner plates, and strain the pasta over them.
5. Put the pasta back in the pot with the reserved pasta boiling water and equal amount of pasta sauce. Stir the pasta and reserved water over the heat. Cook for approximately 2-3 minutes so the pasta is al dente (to tooth) and the liquid has been absorbed and coating the pasta..you want it to be chewy not soft or mushy.
6. Take it off the heat and drizzle some extra virgin olive oil and freshly grated parmesan cheese.
7. Plate the pasta and top each portion with about ¼ cup of sauce.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is a neat idea. As it happens, I was planning to make pasta for dinner tonight, using sauce I made from this past summer's tomatoes, so I have a built-in opportunity to try right away.

I wondered why my sauce was breaking; sometimes the dishes come out out of the cabinet rather cold. (I guess the wall insulation isn't that great in that corner.) However, I think I'll just warm the plates in the oven, since I don't relish the idea of hosing them down with starchy water right before using them.

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