Everything I know about pasta I learned from working with Mario and his team of chefs at Del Posto, Babbo, and Lupa. Through them, my eyes were opened to the beauty and complexity of pasta. At the Pizzeria, Nancy had already elevated pizza to exactly where she wanted it to be, and after my Del Posto experience, I knew I wanted to do the same thing at the Osteria with pasta. I can only hope that I have done “the family” justice, both in our pasta program at Mozza and with my attempts to pass that along to you.
Ingredients
Preparation
Step 1
We like our fresh pasta to have a springy, toothsome quality to it that you don’t get from most fresh pasta. The way we achieve that is to knead the dough. At the restaurant, we mix the dough for 45 minutes to 1 hour in a standing mixer, but for the home cook, we recommend kneading by hand for 20 to 25 minutes. This saves not just time but also the motor in your mixer.
Step 2
To roll the pasta dough, adjust a pasta sheeter gauge to the thickest setting.
Step 3
Dust a baking sheet with semolina.
Step 4
Remove the pasta dough from the refrigerator and cut it into quarters.
Step 5
Dust one segment of the dough lightly with flour and pass it through the pasta sheeter, dusting the dough with flour again as it passes through the sheeter, to create long sheets. Adjust the sheeter to the next thinnest setting and pass the dough through again. Continue to pass the dough through the sheeter in this way until you have passed it through the gauge specified in the recipe.
Step 6
Place the sheeted dough on the prepared baking sheet and repeat, sheeting the remaining segments in the same way and dusting the sheeted pasta with semolina to prevent the sheets from sticking together.
Step 7
Use the shapes or place the baking sheet in the freezer for several hours until the pasta is frozen. Try to resist the temptation to freeze them for any longer than 2 weeks. The freezer will dehydrate the pasta, causing it to crack and break and lose its toothsome texture.
Step 8
We find that freezing the pasta helps it keep its shape when cooked. (No need to thaw it before adding it to the boiling water.)
Step 9
Make sure to boil enough water so you don’t crowd the pasta in the pot. It’s ideal to use a 6-quart pasta pot with a strainer insert.
Step 10
Salt the water. As Italians say, “Salt the water to taste like the ocean.” To achieve the saltiness of the water that we use in the kitchen at Mozza, you can rely on a formula of 1 tablespoon per quart of water. It may seem like a lot of salt, but you want it to permeate the noodle. Besides, salt is cheap, and most of it goes down the drain.
Step 11
Likewise, wait to put the pasta in the water until all your guests are ready to eat. That means seated, with wine. Once the pasta is out of the water, everything goes really fast. And the last thing you want is for your pasta to get cold while the table is still being set.
Step 12
Stir the pasta when you add it to the water so it doesn’t stick together. Then leave it alone while it cooks to prevent it from falling apart. This is especially important with fresh pasta.
Step 13
Cook pasta al dente. Al dente literally translates “to the tooth.” In reference to pasta, it refers to pasta that you can feel under your teeth when you bite into it, as opposed to pasta that is so mushy that to eat it you don’t need teeth at all.
Step 14
Drain the pasta quickly, leaving a little water still dripping from the pasta, then quickly add it to the pan with the sauce. You don’t want to let pasta sit in a colander in the sink, and never rinse it.
Step 15
When you’re cooking the pasta with the sauce as we call for you to do in all of these recipes, the goal is to stain the pasta with the sauce. This step, called macchiare, “to stain,” allows the flavors of the sauce to permeate the pasta rather than to simply dress it.
Step 16
Be organized. Before you drop in the pasta, make sure you have the tools you will need handy—a colander, a strainer, or tongs for draining the pasta (if you are not using a pasta pot; directions are given for this in the recipes), a rubber spatula for stirring the pasta with the sauce, and a grater if the recipe calls for cheese.
Step 17
When we cook the pasta with the sauce, we often add water—a simple step that can make the difference between an unappealing, sticky sauce and one that looks glistening and delicious. We use the water the pasta was cooked in, which has the added benefit of having the flavor of the noodles and salt. We use plain water for the orecchiette and gnudi dishes, because the pasta water would make them too salty.
Step 18
We give you exact amounts of sauce to dress each pasta dish. The idea is to have just enough sauce to coat the pasta nicely and not be dry, but not so much that the sauce leaks out onto the plate.
Step 19
All of our ragùs make enough for approximately sixteen first-course servings. They freeze well, and since ragù takes several hours to cook, it seems silly to make less.
Step 20
If you want to make any of the pasta dishes in quantities larger than those we give you, toss the pasta with the sauce in batches no larger than those we give you. (This means you will use two sauté pans if you want to make eight servings.) Otherwise, you will crowd the pan and end up with gluey pasta, broken shapes, and a big mess.
Step 21
Eat, slurp, enjoy, but whatever you do, please don’t cut the noodles. When I was in Bologna with Mario, I ordered tagliatelle bolognese, and I heard Mario saying, “Don’t cut the noodle, dude.” I didn’t know he was talking to me. He’d never spoken to me directly like that. He kept repeating himself and finally I looked up and I said, “What? Me?” He goes, “Yeah. Don’t ever cut the noodle.” Then he explained. “Think about it. Somebody’s grandmother is back in the kitchen making that thing by hand. You don’t want to show her disrespect.”
