My pasta aisle is bigger than yours

Dear readers, I have decided that you do not, yet, know enough about pasta. I have started to accept as normal that there’s a pasta aisle bigger than Texas in every Italian grocery store.

On a recent trip back to California we were stunned to rediscover that the pasta section in Safeway was a mere 17 feet. Felt like trying to find provisions for a fine meal in a 7-eleven.

So I will begin to educate you. You need to be able to tell your frogs’ mouths pasta from your radiators and volcanoes. You need to know that al dente is far more crunchy than what you probably think. What sauces go with what shapes. That the cooking water needs to be salted far more than you probably do now.

And you need to know that you never have to do anything as uncontrolled as throwing pasta against a wall to test if your spaghetti is done. Italian cooking is far more scientific and precise than that. The know-all cooking times on the packaging need to be taken very seriously.

This spaghetti, for instance, is perfectly cooked at 11 1/4 minutes.

(Unless you finish cooking it in the pan, like spaghetti aglio e olio, when the spaghetti is removed two minutes early to finish in the pan with the garlic and oil, and a couple ladles of the pasta cooking water.)

Full disclosure—I don’t yet know everything about pasta. This is an excellent excuse for me to up my pasta game, and keep you informed of the discoveries.