dinner guests, to prove to yourself that it works. It saves an hour of anxiety should you try it on

guests.

How do you decide how much pasta to cook? There are a number of kitchen gizmos

available to help you measure the appropriate amount. Best and easiest is to weigh it. The

average person eats about 3 ounces (85 g) of pasta by dry weight when it is the main entrée.

Reduce that to 2 to 2½ ounces (55 to 70 g) when it is a side dish with generous amount of other

foods. Take into account the individual appetites of the people you are serving, too.

Storage

The shelf life of pasta is virtually unlimited. High humidity or pests are the only things

that can ruin it. If a larger package saves you money and you have storage space, buy the large

package, even several years' supply. Keep half a dozen different shapes available on your shelf

for variety.

Fresh, undried pasta, on the other hand, has an uncomfortably short shelf life. Most

cookbooks suggest keeping it in your refrigerator for no more than 2 days. That is probably

overly conservative. A fresh chilled dough should keep well for many days, even a week. It will

slowly turn green with mold, which probably won't kill you, but it looks disgusting and signals

emptying the container into the garbage.

You can store cooked pasta for future use, either in the refrigerator or freezer. How do

you reheat it? Start with a pot of boiling salted water, immerse the pasta, stir for 30 seconds,

drain and serve. Even better, lower the pasta into the boiling water in a sieve or colander, then

remove it in 30 seconds and serve. Very fast, very efficient, and perfectly good, they way

restaurant cooks serve pasta. It pays to have cooked pasta in your refrigerator or freezer when

time allows you no choice but quick dinner. Use your imagination for toppings.

You can use a microwave oven to reheat stored pasta, too. These ovens vary so much that

a standard time and method are hard to suggest. Learn the method that works in your microwave.

Still more pasta

We should not leave some of pasta's close relatives unmentioned, even though they are

relatively unimportant when it comes to North American menu items.

The overwhelming variety of strange-named Asian noodles intimidates most Western

cooks who, until now, entirely disregarded them. But Asian noodles are "in" and we can no

longer ignore them. Even mainline supermarkets carry some of them, and one, ramen noodles

became household name. Ramen soup packages are highly popular, inexpensive and most

convenient, almost instant, reasonably flavorful soups that appear on many people's pantry shelf.

Most Asian noodles are no different from our pasta products. They are usually long

products made with wheat flour and there is absolutely no reason why you could not substitute

similar-shaped pasta for them. Oriental egg noodles are similar to Italian angel hair pasta,

vermicelli or spaghettini (these are all long but increasingly thicker pasta) but the Oriental

version includes a small amount of egg. For example, you can use vermicelli or angel hair pasta

when the recipe calls for thin Chinese noodles or ramen noodles. The Japanese make similar

noodles from buckwheat flour, giving a heavy, dark-hued pasta. Some Oriental cuisines even

make noodles from mung bean flour. There is no substitute for these types in the Italian pasta

repertoire.

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