When the Pasta Breaks

On our recent trip to Sicily we had a great pasta class with a family that also grows a special heirloom grain for their own dried pasta. The class was spectacular and fun too. Lunch was a hoot with typically too much food. Our visit to their wheat field was special - the variety had a very dark color and was less productive than the more typical and common durum varieties like the ones we use at Etto. I was excited to bring some bags home and try the pasta and maybe learn something too.

 

I cooked the pasta following the instructions on the bag - the cook time was a bit ambitious and the timing was nearly double what was listed on the package. The pasta shape was a larger type ziti and pretty thick so I expected the cook time to be longer than the recommended 6-8 minutes. As you can see from above, as the pasta cooked it began to split and fall apart. I even stopped cooking it a bit before al dente to best preserve the integrity, but.....

sometimes pasta falls apart. 

 

This took me back to my early days of Etto when we had more enthusiasm and art than science. In the beginning, and maybe some of you experienced this on hopefully rare occasions, some of our pasta was pretty fragile and fell apart. This brought back some memories for sure. It turns out that making great dried pasta with structural soundness on an artisanal level involves as much science as art and this we learned the hard way though trial and error and even pasta school in Fargo, South Dakota (the only university pasta program in the country). Hiring a couple Cal Poly food science majors didn't hurt our cause either.    

 

Our family still ate the broken pasta of course, and it was quite good (the recipe for the dish is shared below). My kids are not strangers to eating some failed pasta experiments. In analyzing this pasta I think a variety of factors came into play here. Some shapes are more fragile than others and maybe these bigger tubes are one of those. Since we don't make them I'm not sure, but I believe the tubes with ridges we make (sedani and mezzi rigatoni) hold up better than most shapes. We've dried some whole wheat and alternative grain pasta and the structural integrity is definitely diminished - so their could be that. Also, this family out sourced their pasta production from their farm to a local pasta facility (maybe they don't have the drying process down, ie. science). At Etto we test every single batch for moisture content and then boil a batch for a longer time than recommended to double check for stability. 

 

Like I said at the jump - Sure, pasta is simple, but it's not always easy.