Tubular/Hollow Pasta

Strand/String-like Pasta

Ribbon Pasta

Micro Pasta

Stuffed Pasta

Mind boggling shapes and sizes, right? And you thought “pasta” just a humble little dish from Italy! Think again, thankfully you don’t have to brood hard over the delicious pasta recipes I have in mind…just go for it! Happy cooking adventures! 

• Cooking pasta correctly needs guidance in estimating the cooking time. It is better not to rely of the package to give you the correct cooking time. It is only a guideline.

• Start timing when the water returns to a boil. Most pastas cook in 8-12 minutes. It is difficult to give exact cooking times since different shapes and thickness of pasta will take less or more time to cook.

• Pasta should be tender but still firm when you eat it, what the Italians call "al dente. Pasta will continue to cook and soften even after it has been taken from the water. (For baked dishes, because the pasta is cooked twice (boiled first and then combined with other ingredients and cooked in the oven), pasta should be boiled for less time than normal.)

• Drain immediately into a large colander standing in the sink, and then pick up the colander with its contents and shake it well to remove excess water.

• Do not rinse unless the recipe says to do so. The starch that makes the pasta stick to itself also helps the sauce stick to the pasta. If the pasta is going to be tossed into the sauce immediately, then sticking should not be a problem.

• Do rinse the wide pasta, such as lasagne sheets. If one does not rinse them then it is hard time separating the sheets without damaging them.

• Also rinse when making a cold pasta salad. The thin coat of starch on the pasta will be sticky when cold.

Who invented pasta, where and when? This is a contentious issue and very much a matter of culinary debate for the food Guru’s to contemplate. Of course various theories have been surfacing, from time to time. Till date, loyal Marco Polo fans are holding on to the belief that pasta originated in China and their great hero brought it back to Venice. From there it spread throughout Italy and later to the rest of Europe. This resilient fable, which necessitates that nothing should have been identified of pasta in Italy until 1295, when Marco Polo returned from his Far East expedition can be easily proved wrong, by citing recorded references in Italy to pasta of a prior date. In 1279 Genoa-Italy, foot soldiers in their inventory, listed dried pasta storage (i.e.'unabariscella plena de macaronis' to be exact), so that takes care of this myth. Marco Polo did make some real contribution with respect to introducing foods; especially of Asian foods to Europe.

According to another set of European food historians, stuffed pastas (i.e. lasagne, ravioli) are a medieval invention dating back to 1100 BC. In the European-Christian cultures they were served with different melted cheeses especially during the religious meat-abstaining days.

Even though different combinations of pasta and cheese were relished by the ancient cooks, the varied innovative “Avatars” of this particular dish is commonly attributed to Alfredo's (restaurant) in Rome, 1915. Why? Alfred Di Lelio, with a little help from the Hollywood big-shots, made it famous world-wide.

The globally famous word “pasta” originated in Italy in 1154 and it’s a Latin word, which translates to "dough, pastry cake.