The latest project mastered by the Serious Eats team is a long series of pasta rants. Yes, that’s a good thing. It’s witty and provocative, but straight to the point. And we couldn’t agree more with their message. You can get an idea of how passionate it gets just looking at the face of Sasha holding his Bucatini Faella.
Pasta shapes matter. Way too many times I’ve had to listen to people say something along the lines of, “It’s all pasta in the end, just use whatever shape.” False. In Italy, sauces and shapes are carefully and intentionally paired with each other, and while you can find both spaghetti and rigatoni coupled with carbonara at restaurants in Rome, you (hopefully) won’t ever see carbonara served with fresh, egg dough pasta like tagliatelle. Why? Because you need the chew of durum wheat dried pasta to stand up to the richness of the egg yolk and guanciale in the sauce, as well as the starchy pasta water that it produces to emulsify the sauce.
We’ve long looked to Serious Eats for their raw curiosity in exploring the off the beaten paths of the food world and for being quite opinionated when it comes to authenticity. With culinary editor Sasha Marx we shared the love for Spaghetti with Colatura, while director of content Ariel Kanter came up with the great idea of putting together their staff’s favorite Gustiamo foods and create what they defined the Ultimate Italian-Themed Gift Box.
Click on the preview to watch the full Serious Eats video Please, No: The Pasta Shapes we won’t eat. You will spot a good number of Pasta Faella bags, will they fall into the most loved or hated pasta category?
