I love all kinds of pasta, even though they’re basically the same as each other, only with different configurations. As you know, my Italian descendant, the shape makes all the difference.
The totally tubular and the stuffed and the strand and the ribbon and the soup and the original g all compete for real space in your cupboard and then your pot and then your gut. Choose wisely, my friend, although you cannot really go wrong.
Fagottini is my favourite one, by miles. If you never heard of it you probably think I’m making it up, in a public gesture of immaturity, but if you’re classy like me then you know what it is and you know it’s great. It’s the one that looks like a hobo’s bindle, except instead of cans or whatever there’s meat or cheese or vegetables.
I’m a fusilli fan, and not only because I’m silly. It’s pickupable without overdoing it like its hefty best friend rotini.
Here’s a pasta real fact that you might think is a pasta false fact. The singular form of spaghetti is actually spaghetto. There’s a real contradiction in a spa ghetto. Or a business opportunity.
Then there’s spaghettini. It should be half a spaghetti, like it is, so the pasta scientist inventor people got that part right. But length-wise is where the noodle is too big, not in the width. Who was the Napolitano eating spaghetti and decided it was too thick? “I don’t know, Guglielmo, I can’t see me fitting a whole one of these in my mouth at once. Thin it up!¹”
Speaking of variations on a good thing, do you even know what a thinner fettuccini is called? Danny Bonaduce? You really think so? I doubt that’s it.
Bigoli is the laziest naming of all. Slippery conchiglie is not really for me, and neither is the al-ways-too-dente penne. But in a pinch with the right sauce, mama mia delizioso!
I like farfalle because I can wear it at formal functions where I ask attendees about their small businesses.
I have a friend who has made it very clear that when she’s at an Italian restaurant, the entire menu must be written Italian so that she doesn’t end up looking like a fool, ordering the albaco-ray tuna. Taglia-tell me another one of your gripes, Sarah. Sheesh.
Just out of college, I moved to Italy for a year. Not only for the eating of the pasta but also because I like saying all the different types out loud, so I figured I’d like the rest of the language too, which turned out to be a miliardo percento vero. Gabagool!
¹ [spiritual antipode of ‘Gimme that wheat!’]