Bisogna ammetterlo, c’è pasta e pasta. Quella buona, più ruvida e porosa, si lega meglio al sugo e mantiene la cottura, mentre quella meno buona diventa subito molle e collosa. Eppure per la lavorazione servono solo tre ingredienti, l’acqua, l’aria e il grano duro. Qual é allora la differenza?
Gragnano Pasta
In Gragnano, a small town between Naples and Sorrento, there are still some pasta factories where the “maestri maccaronari,” with a tradition of over four hundred years, manage to produce pasta following ancient methods. In their facilities, which have nevertheless reached industrial dimensions, a quality of pasta is produced that the Japanese have not hesitated to call the best in the world. Certainly, the secret lies in the sea breeze and the hill air, in the mountain spring water and the wheat ripened under the warm Mediterranean sun. But it is not only this. The dies, the perforated plates that give shape and size to the various types of pasta, are still made of bronze and the drying takes place in ovens at sixty degrees, like the sun’s rays.
A long time ago, wheat was a precious commodity and was offered together with oil and wine during sacred rites. Today, however, its consumption has become daily, and this is also thanks to pasta. On store shelves, there is an endless variety and beyond traditional spaghetti, we can indulge in maltagliati and schiaffoni, trenette and mezzani, penne and fusilli, bucatini and rigatoni.
From time to time, designers create new pasta shapes, such as the one ridged inside, which holds the sauce better.
Pasta can be long or short, and it is chosen based on the recipe to be made. The first blends well with sauces and seafood, the second instead works better with legumes and vegetables. Both, however, must be strictly “al dente.”
To achieve a good cooking, tall and cylindrical pots should be used, filled with 1 liter of water for every 100 grams of pasta. Salt, 10 grams per liter, should be added 3 minutes before the pasta, which is to be thrown in all at once and when the water boils. Remember to stir often and taste to check the cooking point. Following these few rules, you will hardly go wrong.
The marked nutritional characteristics and the caloric power of 360 calories per 100 grams make pasta an indispensable product for the regular and balanced growth of children. It is mineralizing, counters anemia and arteriosclerosis, is useful in colitis, constipation, and thinness. The starch in cereals provides energy to our body, and the polyunsaturated fats of wheat germs reduce the cholesterol level in the blood.
According to nutritionists, cereals should represent 40-50% of daily food intake. And perhaps they are not entirely wrong since for thousands of years Triticum Durum, hard wheat, has been the basis of human nutrition.
