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Contrary to what a number of cookbooks and cooking teachers claim, an expensive,
specialty Italian imported pasta is not a prerequisite to a good pasta dish. Commercial research,
as well as tests in my own kitchen, shows that virtually any pasta, except for the very cheapest
and obviously poor quality, remain firm when you properly prepare it. So does the higher-priced
pasta taste better? No. Why do you need a pasta that tastes good anyway? In almost any pasta
dish, it is the topping, or what you mix it with, that supplies the flavor. Pasta's role is to furnish a
firm but neutral base. It should not become mushy, and it must not stick to its neighbors. That is
all a cook requires of pasta.
Large commercial manufacturers use semolina flour and water to make pasta. When it is
a semolina pasta, it doesn't matter whether it is an Italian import in fancy packages, a locally-
made pasta from a small manufacturer, or a pasta of one of the giant pasta-makers that distribute
all over the continent. Each should taste and cook into a virtually identical product. One of the
major source of flour for Italian pasta-makers is U.S. and Canadian durum wheat. Cheaper,
poorer quality pasta has a combination of semolina and less expensive hard wheat flour (farina).
If they use too little semolina, your pasta is mushy no matter how carefully you cook it. The
higher starch content of the hard flour makes it stickier, too. Since Italians use our own durum
wheat and they don’t know pasta-making any better than we do, why would the Italian imports
be better than our own?
In my own blind taste testing I cooked four different types of pasta: fresh pasta, a costly
Italian import, a fairly pricey domestic and an inexpensive store brand. I cooked each according
to packaging directions, then offered, unadorned and labeled only with numbers, to a group of
tasters. The difference in taste and firmness among the four pasta was not significant. My
suggestion is to buy relatively inexpensive pasta and spend generously on the sauce ingredients.
(Consumer Reports' test kitchen came to the same conclusion in its 1992 testing.)
Toasted orzo pasta
The fashionable orzo pasta is shaped like rice grains and has about the same size. But it
comes in varieties ranging from a quarter of a rice grain to size of a grape. Cooked orzo looks
like cooked rice but tastes like pasta. It's a great carbohydrate side dish that goes well with any
sauce-rich food. If there is no sauce, butter or olive oil are good choice to moisten orzo. You may
cook this pasta in salted boiling water, like an other pasta but in this recipes you toast the grains
first to develop an extra flavor layer, then add measured amount of salted water that the pasta
absorbs by the end of cooking. The paprika in the recipe adds both color and flavor.
Ingredients
8
1
1
¾
1
ounces (225 g) orzo
tablespoon vegetable oil-butter mixture
teaspoon paprika
teaspoon salt
2/3 cups water
Procedure
. Heat a large sauté pan with the oil and butter, add orzo and toast over medium heat
1
with continuous stirring until the pasta begins to color lightly, 5 to 7 minutes. Stir in paprika and
play © erdosh 175
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