16 Facts About Pasta

Italian chefs know everything about pasta and a little more: why al dente, how to eat without getting fat, and where to find the perfect spaghetti al limon. Let's find out too.

What is pasta?

Translated from Italian, pasta means "dough". This word comes from the ancient Greek pastos - "to sprinkle with salt" or "salty". All types of pasta are called pasta, no matter what shape they are.

How many types of pasta are there really?

There are from 400 to 600 types of pasta in the world : spaghetti, cannelloni, fusilli, penne, pigattoni, packeri, linguini - you can't list them all. A new form of paste may appear at any moment. Its diversity and hundreds of sauce recipes make pasta so attractive to cooks - something new comes out every time.

Pasta should be cooked al dente

The state of the pasta , in which it is ready, but still a little hard, is called al dente. Literally, it means "on a tooth". Italians prepare pasta in such a way as to preserve its beneficial properties. They believe that there are much more of them in the raw product than in the fully prepared one, and say that the fully cooked pasta is too saturated with water and therefore becomes difficult for the stomach. In digested pasta , carbohydrates are transformed into an amorphous form and are absorbed much faster.

What is graniano dry pasta

Gragnano is a town in Italy where pasta is made . It is located next to Naples, and its dry factory pasta is known throughout Italy. Back in the era of Ancient Rome, mills for the bakeries of Pompeii and Herculaneum were located here. The city was even rebuilt so that the streets became as sunny and windy as possible. In local factories, it is customary to use bronze rollers, which make the pasta a little rough, so it soaks up more sauce . Italian chefs consider it the best.

Is it true that you can eat pasta every day and not get fat

This is true, but the pasta must be made of durum wheat. This paste is rich in vitamins, trace elements and useful fiber. It is better absorbed by the body and belongs to the class of slow carbohydrates. A serving of spaghetti contains 200 calories, 40 g of carbohydrates, less than 1 g of fat and only 1 g of salt.

"I owe my figure to my parents and spaghetti. I can't imagine my life without pasta , I eat it every day and I'm not getting fat at all," said Sophia Loren. If you decide to follow her example, remember that it is better to eat pasta for lunch, not for dinner, choose a sauce for it not fat, but vegetable, and it is better to refuse cheese.

How to make colored paste

Natural coloring ingredients are added to the dough for pasta preparation: salmon, spinach, veal, cheese, carrots, beets, pumpkin. You probably know black pasta well . It owes its color to cuttlefish ink.

What is homemade pasta?

It is also called fresh because it is prepared from flour and eggs in the home kitchen. Such paste is stored for a short time, but it has a particularly delicate taste. It can be rolled out even with a simple rolling pin, but it is easier to do it with the help of a machine for preparing homemade pasta .

What is a closed pasta?

This is the name of ravioli, tortellini and other types of pasta with filling. By the way, it can be anything, from salmon to cheese, from herbs with nuts to mortadella.

What is al forno pasta?

Al forno in translation from Italian means "baked". Pasta al forno is the well-known lasagna (sheets of pasta smeared with meat stew ) and cannelloni (wide tubes with minced meat) and less popular manicotti - pancakes with filling, baked with sauce .

Pancakes are pasta

Roughly speaking, yes. Food historians believe that crepes have Florentine origins and were adapted by the French into what we now enjoy in sweet and savory forms. The prototype of pancakes was pasta itself . It was simply increased in size. And manicotti remind us of this.

Pasta lifts the mood

Carbohydrates contained in pasta raise the level of serotonin - a hormone responsible for a good mood. Eat pasta and be happy!

How much pasta do Italians eat?

The average resident of Italy eats more than 26 kg of pasta per year. About 2,750,000 tons of pasta are produced there per year.

Can people on a gluten-free diet eat pasta?

Gluten is a protein found in some types of cereals, including wheat, barley, rye, and oats. Gluten is present in bread, pastries and other foods with a lot of carbohydrates. The taste of gluten-free pasta does not differ from ordinary, but it is made from rice or corn flour. You can buy gluten -free pasta in almost any store.

For dessert and instead of snacks

Pasta can be served for dessert. For this, sweet syrup or chocolate is added to the dough, or the closed pasta is stuffed with a sweet filling.

If you fry the cooked pasta in a deep fryer, you get a great snack like popcorn or chips. Sometimes cooked pasta is fried in a pan. The result is " pasta fritta", a typical Sicilian dish with tomatoes and eggplant.

Pasta and Parmesan

In every real Italian restaurant, you will be offered hard Parmesan cheese with pasta , but not with pasta with seafood. Do you know why? Parmesan is designed to enhance the taste of the sauce . But since pasta with fish already has strong taste qualities, Parmesan is not served. This is a moveton.