{^ PASTA TRADITIONS

}

At its simplest, pasta is nothing more than flour and water
mixed together to form a dough, cut into shapes, and
cooked in boiling water. As a food that has been made in
China since the second century BC, in the Middle East since
the ninth century, and Europe since at least the eleventh, it
has one of the longest and most drawn out, and downright
confusing, histories of any food around (though we can
pretty safely say that Marco Polo did not play more than an
apocryphal role in it). And that history is the realm of
historians, not of cooks.
So why do I bring it up now? Only to illustrate my naiveté
in telling my wife she was wrong for cooking it in a
particular manner. In fact, you hear all sorts of things
coming from folks who claim to be direct descendents of
Signore Polo or perhaps acquaintances with the Pope’s
Personal Pasta Producer. “Always use fresh, not dried,” or
“Don’t add too much sauce,” or “Do not add oil to your
water,” or (my favorite), “Add salt only after it comes to a
boil,” often claiming tradition as the reason for doing so.
Well, guess what? You don’t need to listen to any of them.
Indeed, cooking pasta in a large amount of boiling salted
water for a matter of minutes is a relatively modern method.
Prior to that, recipes called for cooking pasta for hours