I think you should buy some bags of Paolo Petrilli brand pasta. Linguine is a specialist, an awkward ugly duckling shape that, presented in very precise circumstances (shallot, parsley, clams) becomes unsurpassably brilliant. Spaghetti will do, but it ain’t the same. Linguine is fundamental to one of the best things you can eat, the beautiful, perfect marriage of pasta with clams. It’s not an essential pasta shape, until it is. Don’t get tangled up in its slippery (with guanciale) painfully spicy (Abruzzo grows great peppers) nest. A guitar-wielding, interminably soloing arch-villain. It’s the glutinous equivalent of an actor’s cameo in an independent film that lends credibility to their oft-reprised moneymaker role in a superhero franchise. Maybe Chitarra’s role is to make our primal need for spaghetti easier to sate. Pronounce Chitarra correctly (like Chianti, with a hard C) and a hopeful diner is spontaneously elevated in status to pasta connoisseur. I’m sure Paolo would beg to differ, like the parent who insists their identical twin children are really quite easy to distinguish at 30 paces. When it comes to the dining experience, I struggle to find significant difference between the two shapes. Identical at first glance, but look closer and you’ll find squared-off edges, a cubist noodle that is requested by name in many of central Italy’s most famous pasta recipes. It’s a daunting implement that to my amateur eyes looks more like a torture device than it a musical instrument. Breadcrumbs and parsley wouldn’t hurt.Ĭhitarra is pushed through a curtain of metal strings suspended above a rectangular box, a “guitar” in the eyes of Abruzzo’s pasta makers. Its beauty is evident in the ability to be served simply in olive oil, with salt, as a complete meal. No other shape is as at ease wholly unadorned. No pasta more easily transitions from summer to winter, from red sauce to white. Orzo (eew.) For the mature pasta lover, most of these frivolous forms are a warm memory, like celery with peanut butter and raisins, mom’s tomato soup, and velcro shoes. Eventually a few (then many) other shapes wandered into the frame. But the shape will always seem simple to us, as it is woven into childhood. Spaghetti’s only serious long-form rival being Abruzzese arch-nemesis (Chiara) Chitarra. I like a mix of caciocavallo and fontina, or provolone. Oh, for the love of Paolo, don’t forget the cheese. *spicy sauce is sold out in NC until October 2022. Bake the dang stuff in a whole jar of Paolo Petrilli brand spicy tomato sauce. On the outer edge of al dente, maybe when their appearance is just beginning to suggest that your feeble American teeth could dare hope to pierce the ridged exterior, carefully drain Rigatoni. Once accidentally aggregated, these clusters of drainpipe-sized pasta cannot be torn asunder. Use nonna’s 19th-century Calabrian wooden spoon, the only artifact from a troubled childhood in Cosenza, to keep Rigatoni separate. Make gentle waves in the aggressively salted, faintly bubbling pasta water. Surprisingly, Rigatoni’s architectural, gracefully curved tubes will shatter into (still delicious) half-moons if vigorously stirred. Strikingly thick girders, made strong with heirloom Senatore Capelli wheat that grows high in the unremitting glare of a midsummer Puglian sun, too far from the Gargano’s wide, isolated massif to be given a moment’s respite in shade. It is stubborn, and actually a little delicate. A watched Rigatoni will never be al dente. It’s a classic analysis of the merits of the small co-ops that struggle to birth France’s greatest bleu cheese. I suggest browsing a battered old cooking periodical in this purgatory. Chronos expanded to infinity, a point of existential emptiness where its passage can no longer be measured using our primitive timekeeping devices. Petrilli Rigatoni boils for a period of geologic time without boundaries. A patient person will stuff each noodle with a meat mixture (I’d suggest ground pork) or cheese.
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