Alphabet
There is no better way to begin than with tiny pasta in the shape of letters. Made of durum wheat and water, alphabet is a pastina, part of a huge family of tiny shapes that includes dots (dots), little stars (stars), storms (little storms) and quadrucci (little squares), all of which are brilliant in broth (chicken or vegetable), maybe with parmesan stirred in, and not just for children.
Bigoli
B is for a big pan and a suggestion; using one litre of water (at a rolling boil) and 10g of salt to cook every 100g of pasta. B is also for bigoli, a spaghetti-like shape typical of Veneto. While bigoli is not always faithful, it is married to one sauce, referred to as salsa, meaning onion and anchovy cooked slowly into an almost-cream.
Casarecce
When it comes to matching shapes with sauces, there are no rules – only suggestions and habits, both of which are over-ruled by the single most important thing: the combination that suits and pleases you. I like casarecce, a dried shape that looks like a twist that has folded back on itself, with broccoli mush. That is, broccoli cooked first in boiling water, then dragged (trailed) around a pan with olive oil, garlic, chilli and pasta cooking water, until it forms a soft and delicious green mush that coats the twists.
Fingering
A finger is a finger, a thimble a thimble ring, so ditali is a thimble-ring-shaped pasta. Typical of Campania, but now diffused, ditali vary from brand to brand – especially in size. All work well in thick soups, especially those with chickpeas, beans, potato or – best of all – lentils.
Butterflies
Every week, resident pasta agony uncle Vincenzo’s postbag is full. The reply will be published on 8 July, when An A-Z of Pasta is released.
Dear Uncle V,
I am a huge pasta fan and consider myself open-minded and adventurous with all shapes and sauces. I know firmness matters, that al dente – with bite – is the aim, and overcooking a sin. What, then, am I to do about butterflies, the butterflies? When I cook them until al dente, the middle pinch is still hard and causes discomfort. If I continue cooking until the middle pinch is al dente, the wings are floppy, which causes frustration, anger and, at times, shame. Please help! Please advise! I want to love farfalle as much as I love all the other shapes.
Yours hopefully, CH
Garganelli
The idea that you need to buy special equipment to make pasta is not just a shame, it’s at odds with the nature of pasta. Looking back at the evolution of shapes, we find the results of hands working with everyday objects. Sheets rolled with a bottle; caved, ridged shapes made by rolling lumps of dough against baskets; hollows in a rope created by an umbrella spoke; edges of parcels sealed with the twist of a glass; ridged tubes formed by rolling a square of soft, flour-and-egg dough obliquely over a comb, and around the handle of a wooden spoon to make garganelli.
Snails
Snails – literally snails, but actually their shells – are one of many pastas named after animals, or animal parts. Its geometry means that, like its seashell sister, a lumaca doesn’t just catch, it holds. The smaller forms broths, medium beans or ragùs, and the largest stuffing, such as ricotta and spinach.
Short sleeves
So much depends on the drying. Also, good grain, good water, extrusion through bronze and good practice, but a considered drying process is what defines good pasta. At the pasta maker Mancini, mezze sleeves (which means “short sleeves”) take 23-25 hours to dry. To my mind, they are one of the best dried shapes: tubes large enough to flatten slightly as they cook, so they have that lovely, mouth-filling quality, but still catchers. They are interchangeable with rigatoni, macaroni and paccheri.
Orecchiette
All pasta starts off fresh, and therefore soft, whether it’s a strand of spaghetti extruded in a factory, an ear of flour-and-water orecchiette or a ribbon of egg-and-flour tagliatelle. In referring to dried pasta, I mean pasta shapes that have been made specifically (usually in a factory) to be dried, so they last indefinitely. Fresh pasta, whether flour and egg, or flour and water, is made to be eaten while it’s still fresh and soft. Lots of shapes can be both. Orecchiette, for example, a semolina-flour-and-water shape from Puglia that can be made at home and eaten fresh, or bought dried. While orecchiette are traditionally served with cime di rapa, they are a promiscuous shape, and get on with almost every sauce.
Pappardelle
Fresh egg pasta cut into wide ribbons, pappardelle are typical of central Italian regions, each one boasting a slightly different width – anything from 2.5cm to 6cm. The Tuscans gave it the name; from gruel, the colloquial for “to eat”. Pappardelle are typically served with rich, meaty sauce, especially game. I also like pappardelle with onion ragù, which is ideal for folds and pleats.
Quadrucci
The name means “little squares”, and this playful shape is easily made by chopping ribbons of pasta into short lengths, and comes as a dried shape, too. In Rome, quadrucci are often served in a light broth with peas.
Rigatoni
Tubes, generally 5cm long and rigate (ridged, hence the name). Loved in Rome and considered by many (me included) a brilliant shape for carbonara.
Weather in Scialatielli
It’s rare that a shape has an inventor beyond a legendary one, but scialatielli does: Enrico Cosentino, a chef from the Amalfi coast, who, drawing inspiration from both homemade fusilli and tagliatelli, produced finger-length, ruffled ribbons. Scialatielli are also available dried and have a surprisingly long cooking time (about 14 minutes). Fresh or dried, they are superb with shellfish, tomatoes and crisp breadcrumbs.
Tortellini
Within the pasta universe, there is a galaxy of pasta filled (stuffed shapes). It is a bewitching galaxy, and home to some of the most intricate and sculpted forms, many of which can be traced back to the 1500s when stuffed pasta entered Italian gastronomy with style in the north of Italy. A star of stars are tortellini, the pride of Bologna: belly button-sized parcels of fresh egg pasta filled with a mixture of pork, mortadella and parmesan, and usually cooked in broth.
Weather in Umbricelli
Depending on who you ask, there are anything from 350 to 600 pasta shapes; in her Encyclopedia of Pasta, the food historian Oretta Zanini De Vita notes she has encountered 1,300 identified names for pasta shapes. This number, of course, takes in historical and dialect names, and also that many shapes have many names. Short, fat strings of flour-and-water pasta, for example, are most commonly known as small, but also strozzapreti, whereas in Umbria they are called umbrellas (“earthworms”) – either way, they are delicious with courgettes, pancetta and pecorino.
Vincisgrassi
“Baroque lasagne” is how some describe this monument of Gastronomia Marchigiana. It is certainly an exuberant dish: layers of pasta, enriched with sweet wine, ragù maybe enriched with offal and porcini, under folds of béchamel.
Ziti
The last shape is the longest: 60cm to 1m, depending on the maker. Originating in Sicily, they are part of the long, pierced, dried pasta tribe that began with busiate, but whose piercing is so extreme, it is actually a tube. They are the shape that takes the longest to dry – six days if in the hands of makers who care enough. They are wonderful cooked and wound into a timbale with peppers and smoked cheese, or broken – snapped into short, penne-like lengths with a beef-and-onion sauce called Genovese.