My friend Fanny (aka Effers) wrote about pasta on Ask h2g2 yesterday, linking to this food info website which describes and names the ‘most common’ types of pasta. Common? I’d never heard of most of them! Here at casa az the most common types of pasta used are spaghetti, fusilli and penne. What about at your casa?
Have you ever made pasta? I haven’t, but I’d especially like to make ravioli sometime and attempt to recreate my favourite dish at Porta Rossa – ravioli filled with seta mushrooms and pinenuts in a cream & nutmeg sauce with parmesan. Though I wonder if it’s really worth the time and effort to make your own.
casa azahar 
Eek!
I’ve been alabastardised!
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agree with TRiG… need to recover from the alabasterisation before I can make any sensible comments regarding this issue…
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🙄
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alabasterized…..?
(That was just a very temporary experiment to check out alabaster, connected with some people, (poor misguided fools, who swear by it). Brunel is where it’s at for the Effers flying ants space).
Yes that pasta link amused me no end. What was even funnier was that when you scroll down these, ‘oh so common pasta types’ on that link, it actually gives 7 sub types of spaghetti:-
Vermicelli, Fide, Ristoranti, Vermicelloni, Filatelli, Vermicelloni giganti, Spaghettoni…
(How’s your saturday going az?).
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Oh I think I got the wrong end of the stick there…..I thought maybe someone had gone to Effers site. It’s just that for a few hours I was on ‘alabaster’ myself…….as an experiment).
Please ignore the first bit of the above post. All this skin stuff confuses me at times. It’s so long since I’d changed skins that I forgot how it works. Funny co-incidence.
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The good ol’ Cooks Thesaurus is pretty comprehensive. It is categorized by variety of pasta (tubes, ribbons, rods, etc). Click on the link for the variety and they have the sub-categories, alternate names, uses and meanings of names, as well as substitutions
http://www.foodsubs.com/Pasta.html
Thanks… now I am hungry.
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Don’t forget to check out Asian Noodles (also sub-categorized): http://www.foodsubs.com/Noodles.html
and Other Noodles: http://www.foodsubs.com/NoodlesOther.html
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I make my own ravioli and it’s super easy and very satisfying! Let me know if you want to try it and I’ll direct you to the post on ReTorte where I have a recipe linked.
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I’ve always found the large stuffed ravioli need to be cooked and cooked and cooked before the insides taste good. Thus leaving the outside overcooked.
My favourite pasta is cannelloni, with lots of thick tomato sauce. My favourite sauce for everything else is vongole mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. 🙂
Anyway, as my buddy Bert the Sound Guy has often quoted, food is merely a vehicle for sauce.
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Beats being brunelled, Fanny. And I’m having a very nice Saturday, thanks. It’s been raining all day so I felt quite content staying in and being all cosy.
Those are really great sites, Anneke. Makes you wonder though. I mean are all those different pastas really necessary? Also, I didn’t realise that couscous was a ‘pasta’, though I guess it makes sense.
WC, I’d love to try out your ravioli recipe so please send us a link. And if you have a recipe for sour cream (or greek yoghurt) pancakes, I’d appreciate a link to that too.
Just googled ‘vongole’. I haven’t had clams in years – must have a look for them at the supermarket and make some chowder now that it’s getting cool out.
We’ll have to go to Porta Rossa while you’re here, zoomer.
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We (well Jim, actually) make pasta all the time. What he makes is spaghetti and linguini. Also homemade egg noodles for chicken soup, which are unbelievably wonderful.
Making pasta is very easy, especially if you have a pasta machine, which we do. For a very long time after we purchased it, we used it about once a year. Now, since we have been watching Iron Chef the machine comes out about every 2 weeks. Iron Chef made it patently obvious how easy it is to make pasta.
I don’t know if all those different pastas are actually “necessary” per se, but we use quite a variety of different kinds on a regular basis.
We use rotini and radiatori, penne, and bowties (whose Italian name escapes me at the moment) as well as the long pastas like spaghetti and linguini. We also use caneloni (sp?) on occasion as well as lasagna noodles. Rotini, penne, and radiatori hold sauce in an entirely different way than spaghetti and linguini do. And when we are making one of our huge dinner salads that include greens, cut up veggies, pasta and/or grilled chicken, we like to use the bow ties because their shape mimics the shape of the lettuces so nicely.
So I guess that all those different kinds of pasta do have their uses. After all, it is a lot easier to stuff a canneloni than it is penne! (smiley face)
And nothing is quite like ravioli.
Glad you are having a good Saturday. I ran away on a solo road trip away from the main road trip and visited the headwaters of the Mississippi River at Lake Itasca and had a wonderful time. Needless to say, I am back now, as you can tell because — hey — I’m at a computer again.
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And yes, you must take Zoomer to Porto Rossa! Jim and I still talk about that place; how incredibly wonderful the ravioli was there.
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I grew up in a community with a lot of Italian-Americans. I’ve eaten a lot of different kinds of pasta. Love it all. Never made pasta, but I’ve thought about it. I would have to get a pasta machine, though, and then where would I use/store it? Which reminds me, it’s time for tuna noodle casserole.
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As it turns out, I’m making pasta now; well, as soon as the water boils…noodles with chicken and green onions in a peanut sauce (with added chilies!). I love Thai food…even the ersatz variety.
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mmm, I eat a fair amount of farfalle (the little bow ties), at least partly because I love the sound of the word.
🙂
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Oh yes, I agree that different shapes of pastas have their uses, but so many of them? The little ear and radiator ones crack me up.
Other than ravioli, I probably wouldn’t try making fresh pasta without a machine. But it’s not high on my list of priorities. Which is just as well as I couldn’t afford one and, like Silverstar, would have no place to store it in my eensy weensy kitchen.
I’d forgotten that you and Jim went to Porta Rossa, hmh. I love that place.
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