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🍝 Spaghetti Bolognese 🍝
How to cook spaghetti
Kitchenware
7.1 liters (28 x 11cm) traditional pot with lid and a stainless-steel pasta grabber.
A wooden ladle across on top can prevent the pasta water from boiling over with no lid on. This pot is a hybrid made of 3-ply steel in a honeycomb pattern to protect the ceramic non-stick coating against the use of metal utensils.
The latest invention - A high cylindrical spaghetti pot.
-Since I read that rolling boil pasta to avoid it gets sticky,
the cooking time for fusilli needs a couple less of cooking to become a la dente.
Before that I used to let them simmer only, and old habits die hard.
Myth or Fact
You can avoid sticky pasta by making sure that the pasta is cooked in plenty of water and that the water is constantly boiling. If the water is not boiling sufficiently, the pasta will absorb the water and become sticky. In addition, you should cook the pasta as the last part of the meal, so that you can serve it immediately.
Old school recipes also add vinegar and some olive oil to avoid the spaghetti gets sticky, but this is a myth.
Is it a good idea to add oil to the boiling water to prevent the pasta from clumping together? No, it's actually a pretty bad idea. The oil does no good in the boiling water but can instead make it more difficult to get the water to boil.
But olive oil is added to prevent the water from boiling over the lid.
With potatoes a dollop of butter is added for the same purpose and can also make the potatoes softer quicker reducing the overall cooking time needed.
Once you toss the pasta into the boiling water, it needs to be stirred constantly for the first minute, then once every 30 seconds for the next 3 minutes to prevent the pieces from sticking to one another or to the bottom of the pot. Keep the heat on HIGH to bring the water back to a boil quickly after the pasta is added, then turn it down just a bit so the water is still boiling, but not overly so.
Remember to drain the water from the spaghetti thoroughly before pouring it onto a smooth porcelain surface on a plate before transporting it from the kitchen counter to the dining table, otherwise it will end up on the kitchen floor!
Level Zero
Then there's the salt. Most people put too little salt in the water when they boil spaghetti. You have to calculate 10 grams of salt per liter of water, so it's more than you think. I know it's difficult, but a good tip is actually to measure the water and pasta so that you get the right mixture ratio.
In addition, spaghetti should always be cooked in plenty of water.
Don't add the salt to the water before it's boiling. It would leave stains in the bottom of the pot.
The use of coarse sea salt has become widely popular, but fine salt will dissolve faster.
Tip: when adding salt or spices from 60cm/2 ft. high above it disperses evenly over a greater area in width.
Cleaning dishware in cold water?
Lipophilic (also called hydrophobic) vs. hydrophilic
Anionic and cationic surfactants in dishwashing detergents.
Elementary Trinity △
Rice: 5 grams of salt per liter of water (about ½ tsp)
Potatoes: 10 grams of salt per liter of water (about 1 tsp)
Pasta: 10-12 grams of salt per liter of water (about 1-1¼ tsp)
Italian chefs often say that pasta water should be “as salty as the sea.”
Contradiction
For unpeeled potatoes some would say about 1 tbsp of salt per liter of water.
Osmosis / Inverted Osmosis: Sodium/Potassium (especially potato peelings)
Max. 100g of raw vegetables or 600g of cooked vegetables per day (potassium)
Sodium decreases the heart rate
Potassium increases the heart rate
Keep in mind that in Western countries we tend to eat four times as much salt as the recommended daily dose.
Portion of spaghetti
Dried spaghetti
Adult serving: 75-125g
Children's serving: 50-75g
If you don't have a kitchen scale, you can use a visual method. A standard serving is about the size of a 2 DKK coin bundle of spaghetti when held between your fingers.
Fresh pasta weighs more and requires slightly less per person
Adult portion: 120-130g
Children's portion: 80-100g
You could also invest in an inexpensive 'pasta meter', a small tool with holes of different sizes that help you measure the exact amount of spaghetti.
The higher the volume of the pot, the less risk there is that it cooks over the lid.
The wider the pot is, the less efforts there is with having to force or break the spaghetti into the pot.
Pasta should preferably be cooked al dente, as the Italians call it. That is, with a bite to the teeth. In my experience, the cooking time indicated on the packages is often too long, so it is wise to take a piece of pasta out of the boiling water a little before the cooking time has been reached. And then taste/bite your way through and take the pasta when it is comfortable - and has a little bite.
If you have cooked spaghetti leftover, then do not add it to the leftover of the bolognese. It will lose its al dente.
Never rinse the cooked spaghetti in cold water - it ruins the taste of the pasta.
Pour plenty of water into a pot and bring to the boil, covered. Use 1 liter of water per 100g of pasta — this will prevent the pasta from sticking together so easily and the water will maintain its temperature when you add the pasta.
Add salt when the water is boiling. Use 10g of salt per 1 liter of water. If you add the salt before, you risk the salt sinking to the bottom and ruining your pot. Do not add oil to the water before it has boiled, as this will prevent the water from boiling properly. Add 1 Tbsp. of olive oil per liter of water. And 1 Tbsp. of vinegar per liter of water.
Pour the pasta into the water and continue to boil, but without a lid. Prepare 75-100g of dried pasta per person or 125-150g of fresh pasta per person. Stir the pot for the first few minutes so that the pasta does not burn to the bottom.
Cook the pasta for the number of minutes indicated on the packaging. Even if you have set a timer, it is a good idea to taste the pasta to see if it is done. It is cooked when it is soft but still has a bite.
Save some of the cooking water before pouring off the rest of the pasta water. The cooking water is full of starch, which works perfectly as part of a pasta sauce. For example, stir a few tbsp. into the tomato or cream sauce to smooth it out and give it the right consistency.
If desired, stir a little olive oil into the freshly cooked pasta. It is a myth that this prevents the pasta from sticking together, but it tastes great. Do not pour cold water over it either, as this does not prevent it from sticking either. If you want the pasta dish to be completely simple, you can mix a little cooking water, lemon zest, Parmesan and pepper together with the oil.
Pasta Water
You can reuse the pasta water to use in a pizza dough for a crisp crust, and
also to make a creamy tomato sauce because of the starch from the pasta.
Reuse the same pasta water two times to concentrate the starch.
🍝 Sorts of Pasta 🍝
First Aid Pasta Kit
If you're looking for pasta in the supermarket, try to look for long-term dried pasta that has been dried at low heat.
Generally, the larger the surface area, the more sauce it can absorb, so you can also try to find a perforated bronze-mold pressed pasta, which gives the pasta a rough surface to absorb sauce with.
Bucatini
Also known as Perciatelli.
Capellini
Ditalini
Fagottini
Farfalle
Shaped like butterflies, also called 'bow tie' pasta (strichetti).
Dried vs. fresh Fettuccine
Fettuccine Spinach with a mushroom sauce served with a Chardonnay.
Fusilli with Spinach
Vegetarian with ginger and nutmeg.
Also, Tri-color fusilli, a mix of yellow, orange and green colors.
Fusilli
Fusilli Tricolore
Gemelli
Gnocchi
Pasta dumplings
Lasagna is both a type of wide, flat pasta and a popular Italian dish made by layering these pasta sheets with ingredients like sauce, cheese, and meat or vegetables. The assembled dish is typically baked in an oven until it is hot, and the cheese is melted.
Lasagna sheets come both as natural and with spinach, same goes for both fresh and dried fettuccini.
Linguine
Linguine is an Italian pasta type similar to spaghetti, but flatter and wider (about 3-4 mm in diameter) and elliptical in shape, hence the name, which means "little tongues". It originates from Liguria in Italy and is traditionally served with pesto or seafood-based sauces but is also suitable for many other types of sauces, including oil-rich and tomato-based sauces.
Macaroni with Bloody Mary
Condiment: Worcester Sauce
Macaroni (Italian, maccheroni)
Soup noodles, also known as suppehorn in Danish.
Swells to double in size in a soup.
Tube-shaped pasta, or
shaped like the name says like postal horns. 📯
Soup horns taste good in, for example, tomato soup or minestrone soup.
Manicotti
Orecchiette Pasta
Orzo Pasta
Penne Pasta
Penne lisce ("smooth")
Penne rigate ("lined")
Pennoni
A wider version of penne
Radiatore Pasta
Ravioli
Rigatoni Pasta
Rotelle Pasta
Shaped like wagon wheels, and also sometimes called by that name.
Rotini Pasta
Shell pasta
Also known as conchiglie and cavatelli.
Spaghetti Pasta
Tagliatelle Pasta
Tortellini
Tortiglioni
Vermicelli Pasta
Ziti
🍝 Bolognese 🍝
Authentic recipe or not, have it your way
Kitchenware
Copper sauté pan with lid.
Copper heats fast and cools fast, ideal for a saucepan.
To sauté means to lightly brown a food in fat for a short time over medium or high heat in a pan or pot.
The term is most often used for raw materials that have been cut up, e.g. vegetables in slices or sticks.
Mandatory
3 portions
400g of ground beef
400g canned chopped or peeled tomatoes
1 celery stem (the leaves are edible)
1-2 carrots (depending on size)
1-2 yellow onions (depending on size)
-All coarsely chopped.
Optional
Red wine (traditional)
Once you get started with adding red wine to the food, the chefs will tell you that the cheapest isn't good enough.
Mushrooms (untraditional)
Garlic (not considered traditional)
'Philadelphia' cheese with garlic and herbs for a creamy consistency instead of cream (untraditional)
140g canned of concentrated tomato puré (optional in my opinion)
or even
400g canned Heinz tomato soup (leftover from making homemade pizza)
or
Salsa (untraditional)
Contradiction
Traditionally the celery, carrot and onion are cooked in olive oil to begin with, but I prefer my vegetables crunchy with a bite and not soggy, the Korean style. Some suggest letting the meal simmer for 2-3 hours, but the grounded beef, won't get any tender because of those efforts. After 2½ hours you can start to smell it's getting burned! If it's about the amount of canned tomato added, that no longer matches the amount of 500g ground beef provided by the supermarkets (300-400g these days only), then I suggest you take the lid off the sauté pan.
So, I'll start with cooking the ground beef with the highest fat percentage of 14-18% which is excellent for a Bolognese meat sauce, so I won't need olive oil, which is overrated!
Traditionally, both one can of concentrated tomato puré, and one can of either chopped or peeled tomatoes 400g matching 500g of ground beef is added. This is either/or to me, and not both/and!
-Add milk, it works wonders!
If you use canned peeled tomatoes, any excess tomato sauce can be used for a Bloody Mary the next day.
You should probably also have some spare celery for this so-called hang-over drink.
The excess tomato sauce can also be used to make a homemade pizza.
Method#1
Chef's Recommendation
Let simmer under lid for max. 2 hours
Method#2
For a stressful everydaying
Let simmer without lid for min. 20 min.
Toppings
Grated parmesan cheese
Parsley (stem is edible)
Never add ketchup to any pasta dishes or the Italian nonnas go waco,
calling it a sin in their 10 pasta commandments.
Another commandment is to never break the pasta while cooking it.
Parmesan cheese
Definition
DOP: Denominazione di Origine Protetta
PDO: Protected Designation of Origin
Greek Feta cheese made of goat milk is also PDO.
The Danish version, made of cow milk is therefore called salad cheese.
Emmentaler is a Swiss cheese but not protected under DOP.
1. Grana Padano (cow milk)
2. Gran Spicco (a cheap variant of Grana Padano)
3. Gran Moravia (eco-vegetarian parmesan cheese)
4. Parmigiano-Reggiano (cow milk)
5. Pecorino (sheep milk, if you can't stand the smell of parmasen, then this one only has half the smell, but comes with twice the price tag)
Pecorino Regions
Pecorino Toscano
Pecorino Siciliano
Pecorino Sardo
Pecorino Romano
Pecorino di Amatrice
After opening a pack of parmesan cheese, it gets harder in the fridge.
-
With a heavy knife, chop the Parmesan into 1 to 1 1/2-inch pieces.
-
Add the pieces to the bowl of the food processor fitted with the regular metal blade. Don't overfill the bowl.
-
Turn on the food processor and let it run until the cheese is grated into the desired texture.
One point is that pecorino cheese - salty and sharp in its most well-known incarnation, pecorino Romano - is made from sheep's milk, and Parmesan is made from cows. Pecorino also has a stronger taste than Parmesan, with a characteristic nutty flavor.
Parmigiano-Reggiano vs. Grana Padano
Grana Padano is cheaper, but the supermarkets and the Danish cheese special stores only sell year two-year old, matured Parmigiano-Reggiano.
No restaurants with respects for themselves would serve Parmigiano-Reggiano matured less than three years.
Parmigiano-Reggiano goes all the way up to 10 years of maturing.
Kitchenware
Multifunctional raw food grater made of stainless steel.
This one has been around for generations, so
no one living can tell what the different sides are good for.
To grate hard parmesan cheese, I use the big side in the right picture. It's far more effortless than the one in the left picture.
-The slower you grate it, the faster the results!
The small side in the bottom in the right picture, is like a chef's knife, good for slicing carrots and cucumbers.
-I recommend slicing, not grating, the carrots for a spaghetti bolognese on the chef's blade side of the stainless-steel grater.
Either side is a horror if you want to grate a soft cheese.
Intro to the Stove
Ever wondered why the two large hot plates are placed diagonally?
A large pot for spaghetti and a large sauté pan for a bolognese fits.
Placing them side-by-side onto one large and one small hot plate won't fit!
The Oven
This baking sheet has a beveled edge on one side. It is both practical and theoretical that this side should face inwards into the oven towards the back. This is practical if you need to scoop your crinkle-cut French fries designed for oven-baking onto a plate.
The theoretical part is that if you have a convection oven, then there are convection currents with the hot air distribution for baking bread in particular with this type of baking sheet.
A grill grate should be used for a pizza stone and also for a springform pan.
Having introduced both the stove and the oven, it's time to move on to introduce the multi-functional salt and sugar for baking bread or pizza dough.
Pasta Carbonara
Next Level
Definition: Carbonara is basically the word carbon (charcoal).
Pasta carbonara is a classic Roman dish.
1 egg per 1 Liter of water can bind.
More pasta water than anticipated is the secret recipe.
Some would use a 50/50 blend of Pecorino Romano and Parmesan cheese for topping besides the traditional parsley, which some don't add to the final dish, but lots of freshly grounded black pepper (let it rain) in the dish and some extra on top before serving.
Some would also stir the parsley into the blended bacon/spaghetti/eggs.
The emulsification of the egg yolk with hot water to avoid it becomes scrambled/stir-fried eggs is all about making the carbonara creamy, but without adding creme to it.
Still, some would also add cream to the whisked eggs, so have it your way.
Should I separate the egg yolk from the egg white, or can I use it all?
One egg yolk per 100g of pasta (1 portion).
For larger portions with 4 eggs, 3 egg yolks are used and 1 whole egg also to make it extra creamy. Others would separate the yolk from the white and then beat the egg white to add later on, by folding it into the pasta.
Most of the Pecorino Romano or Parmesan cheese is added to the whisked eggs besides some grated-on top before serving.
30g of grated Pecorino Romano per 100g of pasta (1 portion).
Pecorino Romano is a salty cheese, so some would not add extra salt to the pasta water.
The starch from the pasta water also helps to make the dish extra creamy.
For an authentic carbonara, only Pecorino Romano is used.
When adding the al dente cooked pasta, like spaghetti or fettuccine, into the pan with bacon make sure to turn the heat down first and add some hot water until it stops sizzling.
For an authentic carbonara Italians would use guanciale instead of bacon. It's about not using too lean meat. The bacon is diced not sliced. The more fat the pork meat contains the less the need to also add (extra virgin) olive oil. The fat will become rendered down in the pan.
Italians prefer to use spaghettoni for a carbonara instead of spaghetti, which is a thicker version of the classic spaghetti, characterized by its larger diameter, which gives it a "chewier" texture and a rough surface that is good for holding rich sauces.
It is made from durum wheat semolina and dried slowly to achieve a balanced cooking and good shelf life for sauce.
If spaghettoni is not available, then linguine or bucatini can be used.
Since eggs are used to make a carbonara, chefs don't recommend using fresh pasta also.
Optional
Mushrooms go well with bacon in the buddy system.
Garlic
Red chili pepper
You might also look into Amatriciana made with bucatini, guanciale,
Pecorino di Amatrice cheese and dry white wine, which can bind the
unbindable olive oil and pasta water.
Fettuccine Alfredo
Authentic Fettuccine Alfredo is not made with cream, but with butter and
12-18 months Parmigiano Reggiano.
Rissotto
Risotto is another Italian dish consisting of rice cooked in broth, often with vegetables added. Risotto is served as a side dish or as a starter.
See also orzotto, bygotto, rugotto, speltotto and kornotto. Some made with barley grains instead of rice.
Balance
Chefs say that if every bite tastes the same it becomes boring. That's where a variety of ingredients comes in, while others would say that sometimes less is more.
Italians eat their spaghetti with a fork only. To use both a fork and a spoon is an American way, I've also seen some do that in Denmark.
Conclusion
Once you've looked into Italian Christmas cuisine with seafood,
it becomes just as reluctant, repulsive and rejective as
British and American cuisine.
What the Italian nonnas call a sin, is related to the fact that family/religion means to tie bonds together. The next generation of Italian heathens prefer to call the sin for international pasta crimes.
Sometimes the Italians use a pasta dish as a starter, and not as a main course.
That's where they start to use a food tong and twist the pasta in a 6 oz. soup spoon to roll it up a before serving it on a plate.
International cuisine unites us all, and death shall have no dominion!