Monday, July 23, 2012

Find The Right Pasta For Your Taste Buds

There Is A Different Pasta For Every Palate


Pasta comes in many different shapes, sizes, textures, and even flavors. Some people love to dig in and try every new kind of pasta they see. While others feel that anything other than the thin spaghetti they grew up with just wouldn't be right. Of course there are the elbow macaroni fans who would never renounce their loyalty to the classic.

With all the variety available, isn't it time you explored what could be waiting for you?  Let's take a look at what to consider when you're ready to branch out in the fascinating world of pasta.

Textures

Different pastas feel different in both the bite and on the tongue. The shape and texture are often created on purpose. For instance, some pastas have ridges, others have waves, and some are a little rough. These textures are put there intentionally to help hold on to more of the sauce. One of the best textured pastas to hold onto sauce is the rotini pasta. It's heavy spiral design grabs sauce and won't let go of it. But, even though it's very textured, it has a lighter feeling on the tongue and a softer bite.

Pasta in tubular shapes, such as rigatoni, elbow macaroni, penne, ziti, and others are perfect to create a good bite. They are also great for holding a lot of sauce because they are a hollowed out tube.  Of course, a shell shaped pasta also holds a lot of sauce in its 'cup' but it has a much more tender bite and is soft to the tongue. Thin spaghetti and angel hair spaghetti have a delicate, small bite, with a texture most everyone loves. Other long pasta like fettuccine and linguine have a thick, serious bite meant to be heavier than spaghetti.

Of course, not all textures are pleasing to all people. There are some textures that just bother people. For instance, pastas made with whole wheat generally have a grainy texture which is due to the natural coarseness of the whole wheat grain. Some people can't get beyond that particular texture.

Flavors

For the more traditional folks, anything other than the typical boxed pasta flavor is beyond the realm of understanding. Why would anyone want to try something different? Sure, they might try spinach flavored pasta or sundried tomato flavored pasta, but that's about as far as they'll go. But, you can infuse just about any type of flavor into pasta that you can dream up.

For the more eclectic and daring individuals, there are pastas that fall way off the grid.  You'll find squid ink pastas, carrot beet sweet pea pastas, and even chocolate peanut butter pasta.  Would you buy these or try to make them? Well, when you think about it, why not enjoy a dessert pasta that tastes like a peanut butter cup. If you can't quite wrap your brain around that, try to think of pasta as just another pastry, since they're both made with basically the same ingredients. Whether you try a savory or sweet, pasta can accept just about any flavor you want to try. 

Style

If there are hundreds of different flavors of pasta, there are probably thousands of different styles, each with their own unique qualities. While some styles you may never hear about, let alone cook, the folks immersed in the art and science of making pasta won't let you down. Aren't you glad somebody is creating all these styles of pasta so we can just enjoy them? There is a sort of “pasta personality” that, when we think about it, makes sense. We attach emotions to our food, so pasta does create a bit of a feeling when we see it in dishes.  Either we know it and love it, or it just seems wrong.

Specific shapes of pasta, along with the texture, varies from culture to culture.  The spaghetti sold in America is different than the spaghetti you would eat in Italy. For years, at least in America, spaghetti, the pasta, was confused with spaghetti, the dish.  It wasn't until the fact that spaghetti is the pasta got  straightened out that we started to see dishes using spaghetti in ways other than topped with red sauce. But, for many, ordering or making 'spaghetti' still means a dish of thin noodles piled high with red-sauce. Old habits die hard.

Other pastas went through the same naming process, where the dish became known by the name of the pasta itself.  Take, for instance, Baked Ziti.  This delightful casserole is simply named after the pasta used in making the dish - ziti. 

And then, of course, there's Macaroni and Cheese. The term 'macaroni' actually refers to the type of dough used to make this pasta.  But the shape, the elbow macaroni, is the original image of “Mac and Cheese” in every child's hungry imagination.  However, things changed, and now this cheesy plate of noodles, whether the noodles are 'macaroni' or not, is still called Macaroni and Cheese.  You can use rotini, shell, rigatoni, penne, rotelle, or any combination of these popular pastas and you still have “Macaroni and Cheese” on your plate.

No matter how attached we are to these styles of pasta dishes, we know that just about any pasta can be used in just about any dish.  It's fun to try new shapes in order to see if you stumble upon something better.  The first person to use shell pasta instead of elbow macaroni in their Macaroni and Cheese probably noticed the pool of cheese sitting in the shell.  Why not make it that way all the time?  Or perhaps a hearty meat sauce seemed even more hearty when served over penne pasta rather than spaghetti. Even lasagna doesn't need to be made with lasagna style pasta!

Pasta has a variety of textures, flavors, and styles. There is always an open invitation to experiment and find a new twist on an old favorite pasta dish. Scrub your old habits and bring out a pasta you have never tried. Re-examine and re-discover all your favorite pasta dishes by exploring the big, wonderful world of pasta.

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