5 pasta rules for the perfect pasta
Chef Evan Funke is completely obsessed with pasta. At his restaurant Felix Trattoria in Los Angeles, only handmade fresh pasta is served. Twice a year, he travels to Italy to find unknown and obscure pasta shapes and learn how to make them from people who have been doing so for generations. What are his tips for the perfect pasta?
Years ago, Evan interned in Bologna with pasta master Alessandra Spisni. Every time he is back in Italy, he learns how to make pasta from people who learned it from their mother, and their mother from their grandmother. And he is not interested in ordinary spaghetti, but rather in unknown pasta shapes such as testaroli and quadrefiore. They only appear on the menu once Evan has learned all the ins and outs from experts with hands-on experience. Molly Baz, a journalist for culinary magazine Bon Appétit, was allowed to spend a few days observing in Funke’s kitchen. She learned from him: five rules for the perfect pasta.
Rule 1: go easy on the sauce
Funke’s advice: think and act like Coco Chanel. Keep it subtle, he means. A pasta dish is about the pasta, not the sauce. Oh dear, that can be a little difficult in the Netherlands. Many home cooks see pasta as a replacement for potatoes in their everyday meat-vegetables-potatoes meal and dump the entire food pyramid onto their overcooked bow ties or elbows. Pasta with a chicken breast on top, roasted tomatoes on the side and stir-fried vegetables in the sauce: Funke says NO.
How should you do it? Take inspiration from this divine recipe: The very best aglio olio
Rule 2: stir like crazy
Funke has exceptionally creamy pastas on the menu, without enormous quantities of heavy cream or cheese. How does he do it? Stir like crazy. When he adds the pasta to the sauce, he vigorously stirs it all together with a wooden spoon. This allows some of the starch from the pasta to enter the sauce, resulting in delicious creaminess. What. A. Golden. Tip!
Try it with this crazy dish: Vjeze’s pasta with things that don’t seem to go together
Rule 3: respect the previous generations
Certain types of pasta belong with certain types of sauce; that has been the case for generations. It has to do with the thickness of the sauce. The thicker the sauce, the wider the pasta strands should be. Thinner sauces such as pesto pair well with pasta shapes with lots of corners, such as fusilli, because the sauce sticks to them better.
Ready to make a classic? Before you get started, check out the tips for the best bolognese
Rule 4: as salty as soup, not the sea
For perfect pasta, you need salt in the pasta water. But how much salt? Some pasta cooks say: as salty as your tears. Or: as salty as the sea. Funke has thought long and hard about this and comes to the conclusion: as salty as your soup is fine. Also bear in mind that your sauce is seasoned with salt too, for example in the form of an anchovy.
This intensely flavorful dish is a good example: ravioli with broccoli, anchovies, sun-dried tomatoes and ricotta
Rule 5: eat what is growing and blooming now
Typically Italian: use only the very best ingredients in your pasta. Organic vegetables, says Funke, and of course you take into account what is being harvested locally at the moment. The perfect tomatoes only enter the kitchen at the end of summer; in winter, you have to make do with pumpkin and cavolo nero. Spring? Peas. And Funke says those can perfectly well come from the freezer. Crazy, those Italians.
When the sun starts shining again… get to work with one of these five spring pastas
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