The Secret to Pasta

I have always been a sucker for pasta. In college, when I was a vegetarian, I think I consumed just pasta and bagels all day everyday. I assumed that since it was all non-fat that I was being super healthy. Whoops! In hindsight, I was non-stop carbo-loading which would have been awesome if I was training for a marathon. No wonder I gained the dreaded freshman fifteen. Those early pasta dinners in my off campus hovel mostly meant marinara sauce from a jar and that was about as complicated as it got. These days my pasta dinners have improved tremendously. Along the way I learned how to make a delicious marinara from scratch. I often toast breadcrumbs to toss on top and I make a mean puttanesca sauce, but somehow no matter how hard I tried I can't quite replicate the sublime beauty of a pasta dish from a beautiful Italian restaurant. Perhaps I am a fool to even try?

Years ago I read the book "Heat." It is a fantastic read. Bill Buford, a writer for the "New Yorker," spent a year working in the kitchen at Babbo and following Mario Batali's own journey through Italy and the path he took toward becoming a chef. I can't recommend this book enough but in it Buford tells us the secret to those rich pastas Babbo is famous for - the pasta water! Now that pasta water gets denser and denser as the night goes on because so many pastas are cooked in it. I am guessing most home cooks just make one package of pasta per day. So while we can't replicate the magical pasta water at home, we should be using our pasta water to finish our sauces. It is the secret to good pasta! This means take the pasta out of the water when it is still extremely al dente and cooking the pasta in the sauce with plenty of water added as well to finish it. This makes the pasta richer and creamier and be sure to add lots of the pasta water to the sauce. I have been using this trick for a while. It works! but the other night I put the pasta in the sauce when it was extremely al dente and the final product was so much better than anything I've ever made before. Next time you make your pasta take it out super early and finish it in your sauce with heaps of pasta water. The sauce will reduce and the pasta will be infused with all of those delicious flavors.