Pasta often brings everyone together at the table, it is a symbol of conviviality, but city you go, cooking times you find.
A geography that branches off between lovers of fresh and filled pasta, and those - mainly from Rome down - of dry pasta.
In the Po area, tagliatelle al dente do not exist, they must be soft.
In Rome, spaghetti likes "al chiodo", almost raw, and the cooking that is good in Bari is not the same in Bologna.
To trace the atlas of the uses and customs of Italians on the subject of spaghetti & co Cristina Bowerman, chef of the starred restaurant Glass Hostaria, in Rome, and president of the Ambasciatori del Gusto association, together with Riccardo Felicetti, president of Italian pasta makers, in a meeting online of the WeLovePasta series promoted by Unione Italiana Food to guide those Italians in the kitchen who, now forced into their homes by the red zones imposed to contain the pandemic, have to try their hand at cooking at home and are beginners.
In 30% of cases, among the lockdown chronicles, the cooking time indicated on the package is scrupulously observed, or even, there are those who still break spaghetti, as foreigners did at the first approach, while seven out of ten Italians do. they rely on the taste or their expert eyes to determine when the pasta should be drained.
The smartest ones do half cooking in water and then try their hand at risotto pasta.
Also trendy is the revenge of the pasta, which evokes the flavors of childhood.
"Dry pasta - says chef Bowerman - represents Italian cuisine in all respects, and is now present on the menus of restaurants all over the world. Indeed for me it is the litmus test of good organization in a professional kitchen, it is the a game that guides the times of all the other orders, from appetizers to desserts. This is why it is a test of skill for the cook. But it is so in the DNA that belongs to our cultural identity even at home. For Italians, the choice of format it is instinctive, or it is rationalized according to the seasoning. Abroad, salt is often added to the table and not in the cooking water. Italians never fall into this mistake because on tasting there would be a difference in salinity between inside and outside . Those who cook pasta in a little water are wrong because when it lacks movement, kinetic activity, fusillo finds the starch attached and remains slimy ", underlines the chef of Apulian origins.
And for large formats, from conchiglione to pacchero, a lot of water in the pile serves not to create cracks in the surface.
"In the past - observes Felicetti - the release of starch during cooking was the number one enemy. Today technology allows chefs to choose between pasta that hunts more or less starch depending on the taste. Thanks to the improvement in production consolidated for decades in pasta factories, adding oil to cooking water is a mistake, moreover the result of a historical legacy of when the production did not have protein support and was sticky. An image of the Seventies - he jokes - but abroad the narrative is still there because Italian pasta evokes tradition, and you don't want to think of it as the result of modern manufacturing processes ".
And perhaps also because many imitation productions do not take so long to cook, while made in Italy pasta, says Felicetti, is subjected to real crash tests and drying and cooking tests monitored with the slide.
"Then the experience counts - he concludes - for the carbonara the pasta can be softer because the bacon is crunchy, while the cacio e pepe requires pasta al dente".
While the jump in the pan, for Bowerman, "a false myth, a macho rite, which allows you to collect the sauce with simplicity, but then you risk serving a cold dish. It must be done exceptionally, and not as a macho test but to make reach the right fatness to the rice ".