It’s true – these are some of the most LOVELY parts of Italy, and we did not resist falling into the lovely cycle of eating our fair share of them on our honeymoon in Puglia these past weeks. Each meal felt like a tiny seasonal adventure with different creative twists and new seasonal ingredients. Slow-roasted zucchini pestos, herby lamb ragu, peak-of-season tomatoes with local burrata cheese, Mama’s classic tomato sauce….and then there was this creamy, dreamy, Pumpkin Carbonara. We enjoyed it at one of the vegetarian-focused restaurants we visited on our trip – La Calce at Borgo Egnazia. Everything we enjoyed that night was absolutely mindblowing, plated with absolute artistic mastery, and with a balance of flavors, I have never enjoyed anywhere, much less in Italy. The idea of weaving creamy roasted pumpkin into a carbonara sauce was something so simple, yet completely new to me and so, it was the first thing I wanted to make when I got home to my kitchen in Boulder.
I had a little pumpkin waiting on the countertop from our CSA, eager to be baked. And so a quick stop, jet-lagged stop at the grocery store for eggs and bacon, and retrieving a little hunk of parmesan from the cheese vault deep in the fridge, and we were ready to go. (I had brought back some beautiful whole grain pasta in my suitcase.)
While the recipe you find below is all mine, the idea itself is surely going to be one of the most lovely souvenirs from our trip to Italy. And with that in mind, I basically brought back a little gift for all of you too – this recipe, this idea – but also a few revolutionary notes on pasta, digestion, the Ayurvedic wisdom of Italian cooking and more.
While I would almost never dream of eating a pizza or bowl of pasta for lunch, or many nights for dinner it felt completely natural and even welcome during our two weeks of exploring the heel of the boot. “Perhaps it was the variety? “we wondered. There were so many shapes to try, so many different ways that they were sauced and zhooshed, with meat sauces and seafood, mamma’s pesto and more. But even with an arsenal of ideas for how to make great pasta, even with a pantry and fridge filled with farm-fresh, local produce (just like an Italian mama,) I still would likely stray away from this practice at home and after a few days, and in quizzing an incredibly knowledgeable Italian granny, I learned the secret to cooking and enjoying amazing pasta, without it weighing us down:
It’s in the cooking technique.
If you’ve ever read the box of pasta you buy at the grocery store, it suggests that we cook until “al dente.” But outside of Italy, and without the company of an Italian granny to wrap your knuckles when you overcook the pasta, thinking that it needs to be soft and malleable before fishing it out of its salted boiling water bath, this term is widely misunderstood.
When we cook pasta (as we typically do in the U.S.) by adding it to water and cooking until soft and chewy, we’ve effectively cooked the fiber and whole-grain powers to sticky, weak strands. When we eat a bowl of pasta like this, our digestive systems rumble and struggle to work through the stickiness, and we feel like we have a rock in our guts. (reminder: our bodies process starches and gluten well when we have the fiber and bran from whole grains to carry the starches through the digestive tract, which is why white bread and non-whole grain bread are deeply taxing to the digestive system, often resulting in gluten intolerance. The stuff just STICKS around in there irritating our bodies!)
HOWEVER, cooking pasta to al dente is about maintaining a bit of “bite” in the pasta, but it’s also about maintaining the integrity of the grain, preserving the fiber, and reducing the starch. If we cook pasta JUST until it has that little toothsome bite, then finish it in its sauce with a bit of pasta water, we’ll still have the whole-grain superpowers of fiber and bran to help move these delicious foods through the body, helping us to absorb their nutrients, and leaving us feeling nourished and whole instead of wholly uncomfortable.
Cook your pasta right, friends. It’s not just more delicious, but also more nutritious!!
Chances are unless you have an Italian granny of your very own who taught you how to make pasta properly (lucky you!) your best guess for how to make great pasta is written on the back of the pasta box. Unfortunately, most of these cook time estimates are horribly overestimated and don’t factor in things like altitude, salinity or minerality of your cooking water, cooking water temp, and more. To make perfect pasta, that’s digestible AND delicious you’re going to have to be present. And, you’re going to use the clock, your taste buds, and your instincts.
Here’s what to do to cook dried pasta to perfection:
1. Select your pasta. Look for whole-grain pasta when possible, and pick a pasta shape appropriate for the sauce. (Chunky sauces want noodle shapes that have little holes in them to cradle the chunks, smooth sauces want long twirly shapes.)
2. Bring a LOT of water to boil: We’re talking about a rolling boil here – big, powerful bubbles! There’s some good argument that you don’t need much water to boil pasta, but in my experience (and the experience of the Italian granny I quizzed) a healthy amount of water is the best way to ensure that your pasta cooks evenly, that the noodles don’t stick together, and that the water comes back up to a nice simmer as fast as possible after adding the pasta. I use a 7-quart pot filled with 6 quarts of water for 1 lb of pasta and a 5-quart pot with 4 quarts of water for 8 oz of pasta.
3. Do NOT add oil to your cooking water. Period. This is an invitation for the noods to gum up.
4. Salt, salt, salt: when your water is at a rolling boil, add salt. I add three very large pinches (really more like handfuls) to my pasta water. Really go for it here – you want your pasta cooking water to be salty like the ocean. The salt gives the pasta its flavor and positively contributes to the texture too.
5. Cook to al dente: read the suggested cooking times on the package of your pasta, then loosely abide. Start checking (and TASTING) your pasta 2-3 minutes before the shortest amount of time listed on the package. For example, if your pasta box says it will take 12-14 minutes to cook, start testing at 9-10 minutes for texture and doneness. Pasta cooked al dente will be tender, but still have some chew and you may even see a little core of uncookedness in the pasta. Al dente pasta won’t stick to your teeth, but it will be “toothsome,” not mushy or soft.
6. Reserve some of the cooking water: before draining your pasta, dunk a mug or measuring cup into the cooking water and reserve a cup or so. You’ll use this to finish your pasta with the sauce. This step also helps to soften the pasta just a leeetle bit more.
7. Drain your pasta, but DO NOT rinse with water! While we don’t want to overcook and over-develop the starches in the noodles, we do want to use the starch that’s on the pasta to adhere the sauce – more than making the pasta digestible, this step makes the pasta delicious.
8. Finish the pasta in the sauce with the reserved water: return the pasta to the cooking pot or to a large dutch oven. Add your preferred sauce, as well as half of the cooking water, and stir to combine. Allow the mixture to come to a simmer and watch for the sauce to coat the noodles in a glossy layer – your pasta is ready to EAT!
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