A Pasta Epiphany

Ever since I started cooking pasta - and that means ever since I started cooking - I thought it meant filling the biggest pot you had with water, bringing it to the boil and cooking the pasta to within an inch of al dente, regardless of how many fistfuls of the stuff you had.

This obviously works, but there are a few drawbacks.

• It takes ages for the water to boil
• It fills the place with steam and steams up your windows
• In 21st Century UK it costs a small fortune

A while back I started using orzo for what I'd loosely call risotto type pasta dishes, and I liked it plumpy and mushy, definitely not al dente. One day I thought, why all the boiling, why all the timing? I'll just stick it in some boiling water, turn the heat off and leave it - as I would do with rice. Small pot, quicker, cheaper, less supervision. Ideal lazy cooking.

Ok. That's the epiphany. But wait, there's more!

Once adopting this approach to orzo, which is a bit of an outlier in the pasta family, I thought why not just do this with all my pasta cooking? It works, although you need to take a bit of care if texture is important, such as something like linguine with prawns etc.

One important side effect. I've always been aware of the top chefs talking about using some spoonfuls of pasta water to get a nice sheen with your sauce and pasta. Could never get it to work because my giant pot of boiling water was too dilute. No starch. With a small pot, the cooking water is nicely concentrated. Voila. Or ecco fatto, I should say

Caveat

This relates mainly to dried durum pasta and works best for small quantities. If you are cooking 500g of spaghetti for a dinner party you need the big boiling pot for even cooking