Types of pasta
 

My children's best friends have just had lunch here. They are another sister/brother pair and are the same age as mine. They're good kids and have eaten here before, but today when I put the pasta out in bowls the little lad told me he didn't really like that kind of pasta and did I have spaghetti instead. I'd bought fresh fettuccine so it would be cooked quickly.
I told him to get it eaten as fettuccine was only spaghetti squashed flat but it made me think .......

Do you prefer spaghetti to farfalle or fusilli to penne? Or is it all the same to you? And what's the best known pasta dish of your region? Here we have a lot of places serving homemade bigoli - like fat spaghetti and the typical sauce to go with it is duck ragu.... Bigoli con l'anatra.

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I find it all most bl@@@dy confusing. My Italian aunt, Luciana, shakes her head in disgust when I serve the wrong pasta with the wrong sauce. I'm still learning. :frown:

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I served Penne with Pesto once and DH's Zia was disgusted with me !! Was told should only be served with spaghetti or orechietti (SP?)
We used to eat lots pasta all'aglio in the summer. Bucatti ( I think thats the right one, like spaghetti but thicker with a hole down the middle) with cold tinned toms, tuna and garlic and basil crushed with oil ..........I'm hungry now !!

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Hello Ernesto, you back here yet?

I was once served large ravioli type things stuffed with squid, but the pasta had been made using the black squid juice and it looked most unappetising. tasted ok but looked like grey/black lumps on the plate.

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Nearly, Lorna.
How was your Christmas and new year are you glad to be back?:)

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The typical pasta dishes here in Salento are orecchiette con le cime di rape - flat ear-shaped pasta with green rape tops(?). Le cime di rape are lovely greens, in England you see fields of the yellow flowers of rape seed. Then there are strozzapreti (priest chokers(?)) little slightly rolled pasta, and minchiareddhi (that rude word again). It is strange how different pasta shapes go with certain types of sauce. We always have linguine with sea-food sauce, penne and tortiglioni with ragu or to make pasta al forno. Spaghetti is great agli olio, hot chilli peppers and anchovies or with most sauces I think. I hate bucattini and fusilli, weird.

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I dislike fusilli too, but it's oh's fav. He doesn't care what should go with what. It's fusulli, fusilli and more fusilli for him. I like spaghetti.

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It's a serious business, isn't it! We had a big meal at a pizzeria for all the Brits the day before our wedding. Because there are 3 celiacs in our family they provided gluten-free pasta. The owner came out with three different pasta shapes on a presentation dish to ask me which kind the family would prefer- I laughed because honestly, they wouldn't care what shape it was, they were just happy to have something that they could eat. I was asked quite sharply what I was laughing at. Oops!

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I buy a lot of penne and the other short tube type pastas, not because I like it but it's easier for my daughter to eat than spag! My favourite is farfalle with any kind of ragu but especially mushroom! Here big ravioli are popular in restaurants but I couldn't tell you what was regional! Esselunga sells a potato filled tortellini which is allegedly Tuscan. It's good! I nearly bough fresh, chocolate filled, chocolate ravioli yesterday...,

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In Naples they have paccheri. They are like big rigatoni, but not rigate. Yum.
On telly here the ther day there was one of those phone ins where the question is supposed to be so easy that everyone phones in and pays a pound for the phone call. Anyway, the question was "Which kind of pasta is typically eaten with bolognese" spaghetti was I think meant to be the answer, becasue in England they associate spahetti with bolognese, but in Naples no way is bolognese put with spaghetti.

I love all pasta types really - including fusilli. Spaghetti is probably my least favourite.

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What's mushroom ragu? :S

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my kids have got fussy recently and wont eat spaghetti for some reason... I reckon they are just too lazy! I have no idea what goes with what. :confused: I like egg tagliatelle with carbonara tho, but not sure if you are 'supposed' to have it like that. Pesto goes on whatever I've got in the cupboard for a quick lunch for myself!!

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Spaghetti can be hard work until you learn the knack of lifting a few strands and then twiddling them on the side of your plate. As far as I know spaghetti is never served in schools here as too many kids could make too much of a mess with it. Quicker and easier to serve penne. Stab a bit with a fork and eat it - no mess.

It still amuses me when I see non Italians get served with an extra spoon in restaurants for their spaghetti .......... if you can twiddle it on an extra spoon why can't you twiddle it on the side of your plate or dish ???

Or do what the Italians do ....... twiddle a lump of it and shove it in your mouth and bite off the dangly bits to be picked up later :lol:

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DH has just made pasta all'aglio, olio e peperoncino and was not impressed we had no spaghetti. We had it with penne which was just as good :)

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Like I said - in some cases pasta is just that - PASTA.

Having said that, I once served served carbonara with pasta tubes because I'd finished all the spaghetti and although it tasted the same, it didn't "feel" the same.

Who'd have ever thought coming to Italy that plain old pasta could be so diverse!

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Ragu with mushrooms in it.

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When I make a big batch of ragu (is it the same as bolognese?) I always add a handful of dried porcini mushrooms, I freeze it and then I use it for pasta or add kidney beans and hot chiili pepper and call it Chili con carne.

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Ragu ( just the same as Bolognese) is not traditonally made with mushrooms - but once you have your basic ragu recipe you can stick anything in it you like, like kideney beans and chilli and paprika and mushrooms and call it chilli con carne.

I knoiw that I make dishes and dishes full of bolgnese for my dad when I go back. Some of it I use to make him a lasagna. The rest goes in his freezer to make whatever he wants and what he wants to spice it up with .......
jacket potato
chicken breast
pasta
pork cutlet

Like I said - whatever....

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In all the cook books I've read, from Silver Spoon to wotsit Carluccio it says ragu is basically tinned tomatoes, mince of some kind, onions, garlic, tomato paste and wine. Some add chicken livers which is good but can be awkward to find in tiny quantities, plus salt and pepper. So anything else stuck in it, it becomes ragu with whatever you've stuck in it - to me this is also bolognaise, but I think bolognaise may even be when you've put the chicken livers in I'm not sure!:)

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Btw, if you are ever stuck for time or only need a small quantity of ragu can I recommend the Barilla sauces in a jar??:) Yeah, I know, but they are really, really good! They do a bolognese one, one with sausage, one with mushrooms added and a basic ragu - so there must be a difference, if one is labelled ragu and the other bolognese - just checked!! Lol! It's called ragu alla bolognese,to differentiate it?? I don't know, but it does have soffritto in it which I don't normally do I must admit, maybe that is the difference?? Unless you do of course, I know a lot of people here use soffritto in everything. I could do with a mezzaluna though first!:D

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As far as I know, the REAL BOLOGNESE sauce is the plain mincemeat one. Anything other than that is a sugo or a ragu as long as the same suace is a traditional one and meat one like sugo alla lepre and bigoli con l'anatra. Ragu has to look like mincemat sauce even if that mincemeat is from duck - hare - deer etc.

It's a farse that ragu means Bolognese. It is so much more so than ragu and should not just mean mincemat sauce - hence :::::


ragu al'anatra
ragu alla lepre
ragu al coniglio
ragu al' cervo

etc. etc.

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That's was what I meant, I should just have capitalised the "with"! Lol!:thumbup:

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Not so fond of tagliatelle... can't go wrong with a dish of spaghetti all'aglio,olio e peperoncino.........yumyumyum:thumbsup:

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As always there is a lot of regional differences re food, so just to fill you in from a Neopolitan perspective: In Naples, ragù and bolognese are 2 very different things. Ragù in Naples is no way made from bolognese. It is made with chunks of meat and is cooked on a low heat for hours and hours. No veg is added - only onion at the begining which disappears during the hours of cooking. Bolognese is OTOH made with mince meat and usually carrot and onion.

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Bolognese here is also without tomato. Ragu is made with a mix of pork and calve meat here in Campania and slow cooked for about 6 hours. Only the sauce is used for pasta and the meat and a little bit of sauce is the "secondo"