Copyright 2002 Blacks Culinary

Cooking your Pasta While it used to be common practice to not disturb your pasta while it boiled. This is another common mistake. Stirring your pasta often during the cooking process encourages even cooking while reducing the ability of the pasta to stick together. When you place your pasta in the pot, drop it all at once in the center. This will cause the pasta to “fan out”. If it needs a little help you can spread it out manually. As the pasta softens push it down gently using the back of a pasta spoon until the pasta is entirely submerged. Stir your pasta often. Stirring in the beginning will reduce the pastas ability to stick together. Most dried spaghetti will finish cooking in about 10 minutes, but this depends on many factors such as freshness, pasta diameter and water temp ... The best way to tell if your pasta is close to being done is to simply remove a strand and taste it. What you are looking for is a tender chew that seems like it “needs another minute” , and it does but it should spend that minute finishing in the sauce. You do not want to cook your pasta fully before draining it. Most pasta is best left to finish in a chefs pan with some of the sauce. Finishing your Pasta To finish the pasta, drain reserving ¼ - ½ cup of the pasta water. Place the drained pasta (do not rinse) into a chefs pan. Add some of the sauce and a small amount of pasta water to “marry the sauce”. Toss the sauce and pasta vigorously. As you toss the pasta it will soak up the sauce. You are looking for the pasta to evenly turn a pleasant pinkish color. This is the sign of a good pasta cook. When you can see the sauce has soaked into the noodle. Nothing bugs me more than snow white pasta under a mound of sauce. A sight more common here in America than I would like to admit. Baking the Meatballs – many cooks find baking their meatballs before braising them in the sauce reduces the amount of fat in the sauce while providing a pleasantly textured meatball somewhere between a pan fried and a raw braised. This was my way to cook them for many years. To bake your meatballs preheat your oven to 375*. Bake anywhere from 25 minutes to 40 minutes depending on the size of the meatballs. You are looking for an internal temperature above 160*. Place into your preferred sauce and simmer covered for at least 30 minutes or till the meatballs have softened.