What is pasta? Italian pasta (pronounced “PAS-tah”) is a collective name for a category of food made from wheat flour and water, sometimes with egg. The name refers to the resulting dough (pasta also means “dough”) that is rolled out and cut into various shapes. Pasta is cooked in water and served with a sauce
How to make pasta
Ingredients
In general, dried pasta is made with flour made from durum wheat. Fresh pasta is made from wheat flour (preferably very finely ground ’00’ flour), whether or not combined with wheat semolina, and eggs. Because home-made pasta is usually eaten fresh, here follows the instructions for fresh pasta:
A mixture of type ’00’ flour, semolina (semolina or coarsely ground wheat) and salt is heaped on a work surface. Semolina is an ingredient in every fresh pasta type and the proportions also differ; the further you travel towards the heel of Italy, the more semolina is used. Semolina gives the pasta a bite.
Kneading and forming
Make a dimple in the mountain of flour. Pour the beaten eggs into it. The precise amount of eggs, and possibly egg yolks, differ per chef. The chef will stir the flour little by little with the fingers and knead the dough for ten minutes.
Before rolling out (Italians do this with a large rolling pin) or passing the dough through the pasta machine, the dough is left to first rest for an hour. The exact amount of egg that you need in the dough depends on the flour. Different brands absorb different amounts of moisture, but a true pasta maestro understands that even regional, geographical and weather conditions under which the grain has grown can make a difference.
The pasta sheets are then cut and shaped by hand into the desired pasta shape.
How to cook the pasta
Pasta is cooked in a large pan with salted water - preferably as salty as the sea. By stirring the pasta at the start of the cooking time, it will not stick - the splash of oil you hear so much about isn’t really necessary. The cooking time differs per pasta, should definitely not be cooked for too long. In fact, Italian chefs prefer to under-cook their pasta by about a minute short. After draining, the pasta may be added to the sauce in the pan until it is perfectly cooked - al dente or otherwise. The pasta dish can still be stirred with some of the reserved cooking water from the pasta.