Best 74 quotes in «pasta quotes» category

Puttana is too good for the likes of her." A puttana is an Italian whore, and in Italy whores have a somewhat more reputable standing than they do elsewhere. For centuries they've been glorified in both classic opera and popular song. Among their many trustworthy attributes, Italian whores are reputed to be responsible for the development of a much beloved pasta sauce, pasta puttanesca, a spicy and salty dish made with capers and anchovies. Its chief attraction, aside from its wonderful flavor, is that it can be prepared quickly- in other words, between clients.

I began by preparing my pasta: my deft fingers forming the intricate shapes of rigatoni, ravioli, spiralli, spaghetti, cannelloni, and linguini. Then I would brew sauces of sardines, or anchovies or zucchini or sheep's cheeses, of saffron, pine nuts, currants, and fennel. These I would simmer in the huge iron cauldrons, which were constantly bubbling above the fire. My pasta dishes, I have to say, were famous throughout the province, and the scent of my sauces carried by the breeze was sufficient to fill a poor man's stomach. I also kneaded bread and produced the finest pane rimacinato, the most delicious ciabatta and focaccia that had ever been tasted in the region. Sometimes I would add wild thyme to the dough, or fragrant rosemary; plucked fresh from the hedgerow, with the dew still on the leaves.

I'll make dinner." That means dried pasta again, I suppose, cooked on Armande's wood-stove. There's a jar of it in the pantry, though I dare not think how old it is. Anouk and Rosette love pasta above almost everything else; with a little dash of oil and some basil from the garden, they will both be happy. There are peaches, too; and brandied cherries and plums from Narcisse, and a flan aux pruneaux from his wife, and some galette and cheese from Luc.

I make myself an espresso and bring it over to the pastry station where I begin the pasta. I can hear Tony whistling in the large walk-in refrigerator as he unloads the day's shipment of meat and eggs. I measure out the semolina and deposit it into several piles of approximately equal size on the marble station. Tony has set out a large bowl of fresh eggs and several containers of pasta flavorings, two kinds of pepper (red and coarsely ground black), lemon zest and anchovy paste.

Carbonara: The union of al dente noodles (traditionally spaghetti, but in this case rigatoni), crispy pork, and a cloak of lightly cooked egg and cheese is arguably the second most famous pasta in Italy, after Bologna's tagliatelle al ragù. The key to an excellent carbonara lies in the strategic incorporation of the egg, which is added raw to the hot pasta just before serving: add it when the pasta is too hot, and it will scramble and clump around the noodles; add it too late, and you'll have a viscous tide of raw egg dragging down your pasta. Cacio e pepe: Said to have originated as a means of sustenance for shepherds on the road, who could bear to carry dried pasta, a hunk of cheese, and black pepper but little else. Cacio e pepe is the most magical and befuddling of all Italian dishes, something that reads like arithmetic on paper but plays out like calculus in the pan. With nothing more than these three ingredients (and perhaps a bit of oil or butter, depending on who's cooking), plus a splash of water and a lot of movement in the pan to emulsify the fat from the cheese with the H2O, you end up with a sauce that clings to the noodles and to your taste memories in equal measure. Amatriciana: The only red pasta of the bunch. It doesn't come from Rome at all but from the town of Amatrice on the border of Lazio and Abruzzo (the influence of neighboring Abruzzo on Roman cuisine, especially in the pasta department, cannot be overstated). It's made predominantly with bucatini- thick, tubular spaghetti- dressed in tomato sauce revved up with crispy guanciale and a touch of chili. It's funky and sweet, with a mild bite- a rare study of opposing flavors in a cuisine that doesn't typically go for contrasts. Gricia: The least known of the four kings, especially outside Rome, but according to Andrea, gricia is the bridge between them all: the rendered pork fat that gooses a carbonara or amatriciana, the funky cheese and pepper punch at the heart of cacio e pepe. "It all starts with gricia.

I like cooking pasta. Maybe it's that I always wanted to be Italian American in some dark part of my soul; maybe I get off on that final squirt of emulsifying extra virgin, just after the basil goes in, I don't know.

Load the sailboat with bottles of white wine, olive oil, fishing rods, and yeasty, dark-crusted bread. Work your way carefully out of the narrow channels of the Cabras port on the western shore of Sardinia. Set sail for the open seas. Navigate carefully around the archipelago of small boats fishing for sea bass, bream, squid. Steer clear of the lines of mussel nets swooping in long black arcs off the coastline. When you spot the crumbling stone tower, turn the boat north and nuzzle it gently into the electric blue-green waters along ancient Tharros. Drop anchor. Strip down to your bathing suit. Load into the transport boat and head for shore. After a swim, make for the highest point on the peninsula, the one with the view of land and sea and history that will make your knees buckle. Stay focused. You're not here to admire the sun-baked ruins of one of Sardinia's oldest civilizations, a five-thousand-year-old settlement that wears the footprints of its inhabitants- Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans- like the layers of a cake. You're here to pick herbs growing wildly among the ancient tombs and temples, under shards of broken vases once holding humans' earliest attempts at inebriation. Taste this! Like peppermint, but spicy. And this! A version of wild lemon thyme, perfect with seafood. Pluck a handful of finocchio marino,sea fennel, a bright burst of anise with an undertow of salt. Withfinocchioin fist, reboard the transport vessel and navigate toward the closest buoy. Grab the bright orange plastic, roll it over, and scrape off the thicket of mussels growing beneath. Repeat with the other buoys until you have enough mussels to fill a pot. In the belly of the boat, bring the dish together: Scrub the mussels. Bring a pot of seawater to a raucous boil and drop in the spaghetti- cento grammi a testa. While the pasta cooks, blanch a few handfuls of the wild fennel to take away some of the sting. Remove the mussels from their shells and combine with sliced garlic, a glass of seawater, and a deluge of peppery local olive oil in a pan. Take the pasta constantly, checking for doneness. (Don't you dare overcook it!) When only the faintest resistance remains in the middle, drain and add to the pan of mussels. Move the pasta fast and frequently with a pair of tongs, emulsifying the water and mussel juice with the oil. Keep stirring and drizzling in oil until a glistening sheen forms on the surface of the pasta. This is called la mantecatura, the key to all great seafood pastas, so take the time to do it right.

I'm making lunch. Who wants pasta?" "We have leftover caramelized cauliflower and some cannellini beans soaking," Lois says. "There's a chunk of pancetta in there," Benji pipes in. "I roasted a mess of garlic yesterday," Andrea offers. "Perfect," I say, smiling, the dish coming together in my head.

In Scappi's cookbook we see the first Italian recipes ever published that rely heavily on dairy, particularly butter and cheeses. There are also numerous recipes for pasta. Turkey makes its first appearance in an Italian cookbook. And many of us today are familiar with a recipe first found in L'Opera: zabaglione. The flavors that are prevalent in the cookbook are a little cloying to modern audiences, relying heavily on rosewater, sugar, pepper, ginger, nutmeg, and cinnamon. These flavors make sense in the variety of flaky pastries that are described in the book, but can be a little more off-putting when incorporated into a savory pasta dish.

I think of them again now as I warm meatballs in sauce on the camp stove. This is Aunty Connie's recipe, using pork mince and pecorino. The simple tomato sauce is so cluttered with meatballs you could stand the spoon up in the bowl. Aunty Connie's theory is that meat should be included in every meal to help children grow, and whenever we visited her as kids we came home with our stomachs at bursting point. She makes beautiful veal dishes, such huge piles of pasta they threaten to break the serving dishes, prosciutto sliced thin as lace so you can see through it, and polpette. Meatballs, meatballs, meatballs. I flick off the camp stove. The pot sends up curls of steam and the scent of pork and fennel and tomatoes simmered till sweet. I breathe it in, pushing cannoli, cassata, and cookie fantasies to one side.

It is estimated that Italians eat an average of sixty pounds of pasta yearly--- a large bowl of pasta six days a week.

Luke made pasta." - Jocelyn Fray

No dish in history has as many variations, colors, motifs, tastes, textures and subtleties as a dish of pasta.

. . . pasta is rarely fatal. Unless Isabelle makes it." - Jace Wayland

People just adore pasta. It's a simple fact.

Spaghetti del mare," she said, coming through the door, "from the sea." In the large, wide blue bowl, swirls of thin noodles wove their way between dark black shells and bits of red tomato. "Breathe first," Charlie told him, "eyes closed." The steam rose off the pasta like ocean turned into air. "Clams, mussels," Tom said, "garlic, of course, and tomatoes. Red pepper flakes. Butter, wine, oil." "One more," she coaxed. He leaned in- smelled hillsides in the sun, hot ground, stone walls. "Oregano," he said, opening his eyes. Charlie smiled and handed him a forkful of pasta. After the sweetness of the melon, the flavor was full of red bursts and spikes of hot pepper shooting across his tongue, underneath, like a steadying hand, a salty cushion of clam, the soft velvet of oregano, and pasta warm as beach sand.

– Sto uscendo! Anche oggi non torno per pranzo, abbiamo gli ultimi scrutini. Vi ho lasciato il pranzo pronto. – Maaa’! – Che c’è, noioso? Sono sulla porta e ho fretta! – Qui non c’è nessun pranzo pronto! – Come, non c’è?! I pelati sono nell’armadio a lato del frigo, la pasta ve l’ho messa nello scaffale di destra e per l’acqua basta aprire il rubinetto! Più pronto di così.

The evening Bartolomeo left her the radish rose, he also ignored the words of her gray-haired mother and gave Stella an extra serving of pappardelle, made fresh from ricotta, eggs, and goat milk, fried to perfection and dusted in sugar. They were called "gobble-ups" for a good reason, and the principessa was pleased to indulge, that is until her mother bade Bartolomeo to take the plate away. She glared at her mother and snatched one last fritter. Sugar coated the edge of her pretty lips and Bartolomeo thought he might swoon. He would give anything to kiss the sweetness away. The rose was gone when he went to clear the plates. He could only hope she had secreted it away in the finely embroidered saccoccia hanging at her hip.

Italian cuisine, at its very best, is a math problem that doesn't add up. A tangle of noodles, a few scraps of pork, a grating of cheese are transformed into something magical. 1+1=3: more alchemy than cooking.

No matter how little we had, we never felt hungry. We ate a lot of pasta and it filled our bellies. Pasta is cheap and filling. What more can you ask for?

PASTA!!

Spaghetti alla puttanesca is typically made with tomatoes, olives, anchovies, capers, and garlic. It means, literally, "spaghetti in the style of a prostitute." It is a sloppy dish, the tomatoes and oil making the spaghetti lubricated and slippery. It is the sort of sauce that demands you slurp the noodles Goodfellas style, staining your cheeks with flecks of orange and red. It is very salty and very tangy and altogether very strong; after a small plate, you feel like you've had a visceral and significant experience. There are varying accounts as to when and how the dish originated- but the most likely explanation is that it became popular in the mid-twentieth century. The first documented mention of it is in Raffaele La Capria's 1961 novel, Ferito a Morte. According to the Italian Pasta Makers Union, spaghetti alla puttanesca was a very popular dish throughout the sixties, but its exact genesis is not quite known. Sandro Petti, a famous Napoli chef and co-owner of Ischian restaurant Rangio Fellone, claims to be its creator. Near closing time one evening, a group of customers sat at one of his tables and demanded to be served a meal. Running low on ingredients, Petti told them he didn't have enough to make anything, but they insisted. They were tired, and they were hungry, and they wanted pasta. "Facci una puttanata qualsiasi!" they cried. "Make any kind of garbage!" The late-night eater is not usually the most discerning. Petti raided the kitchen, finding four tomatoes, two olives, and a jar of capers, the base of the now-famous spaghetti dish; he included it on his menu the next day under the name spaghetti alla puttanesca. Others have their own origin myths. But the most common theory is that it was a quick, satisfying dish that the working girls of Naples could knock up with just a few key ingredients found at the back of the fridge- after a long and unforgiving night. As with all dishes containing tomatoes, there are lots of variations in technique. Some use a combination of tinned and fresh tomatoes, while others opt for a squirt of puree. Some require specifically cherry or plum tomatoes, while others go for a smooth, premade pasta. Many suggest that a teaspoon of sugar will "open up the flavor," though that has never really worked for me. I prefer fresh, chopped, and very ripe, cooked for a really long time. Tomatoes always take longer to cook than you think they will- I rarely go for anything less than an hour. This will make the sauce stronger, thicker, and less watery. Most recipes include onions, but I prefer to infuse the oil with onions, frying them until brown, then chucking them out. I like a little kick in most things, but especially in pasta, so I usually go for a generous dousing of chili flakes. I crush three or four cloves of garlic into the oil, then add any extras. The classic is olives, anchovies, and capers, though sometimes I add a handful of fresh spinach, which nicely soaks up any excess water- and the strange, metallic taste of cooked spinach adds an interesting extra dimension. The sauce is naturally quite salty, but I like to add a pinch of sea or Himalayan salt, too, which gives it a slightly more buttery taste, as opposed to the sharp, acrid salt of olives and anchovies. I once made this for a vegetarian friend, substituting braised tofu for anchovies. Usually a solid fish replacement, braised tofu is more like tuna than anchovy, so it was a mistake for puttanesca. It gave the dish an unpleasant solidity and heft. You want a fish that slips and melts into the pasta, not one that dominates it. In terms of garnishing, I go for dried oregano or fresh basil (never fresh oregano or dried basil) and a modest sprinkle of cheese. Oh, and I always use spaghetti. Not fettuccine. Not penne. Not farfalle. Not rigatoni. Not even linguine. Always spaghetti.

The grilled calamari and spinach antipasto has been a mainstay since we opened, so paying a premium to keep it on the menu is a no-brainer, providing the quality is sufficiently high. I get one of the line guys to pull the lunch menus and type a new one that I dictate while pulling stuff from the walk-in and freezer. Today, our prix fixe menu will feature cucina poverta: polpettone alla napoletana, an Italian meat loaf; pappa al pomodoro; a ragout with sausages and peppers; and braciole (providing Rob, the meat guy, comes through in time). When the meat still has not shown up by ten I'm on the phone yelling at some hapless office person, although it's just about hopeless, because, unless the meat shows up in the next five minutes, there will not be enough time to make the braciole. To cover for the fact that we were only able to buy fifteen pounds of calamari from Dean and Deluca (at an exorbitant price), Tony and I devise an additional antipasto, a ricotta and Pecorino torta flavored with hot pepper and prosciutto.

This penne is much too arrabiata, and you did it on purpose," said Magnus when the surly werewolf waiter hove into view. "Werewolf rights," Erik grumped. "Crush the vile oppressors." "Nobody has ever won a revolution with pasta, Erik," said Magnus. "Now get a fresh dish, or I'll tell Luigi on you.

Toxic relationships are like a good pasta that has been overcooked.

Well, when I was five, I wanted my mother to let me go around and around inside a dryer with the clothes,” Clary said. “The difference is, she didn’t let me.” “Probably because going around and around in a dryer can be fatal,” Jace pointed out, “whereas pasta is rarely fatal. Unless Isabelle makes it.

When the phone rang I was in the kitchen, boiling a potful of spaghetti and whistling along with an FM broadcast of the overture to Rossini's 'The Thieving Magpie,' which has to be the perfect music for cooking pasta.

You know," she confided, "your recipe for Cajun Chicken Pasta? On page twenty-eight?" She nodded toward the book I'd just signed for her. "Yes?" "Totally works with skim milk instead of heavy cream." She nodded proudly. "Not that I tried the cream version. I'm sure in a blind taste test that's the one I'd prefer, but skim works!" I imagined the dish, using milk in the pan with the chicken fond, sun-dried tomatoes, oregano, and blackening spice, and could see where the milk would reduce into a nice thick sauce.

All food starting with p is comfort food: pasta, potato chips, pretzels, peanut butter, pastrami, Pizza, pastry.

And what, for instance, would have happened had Romeo and Juliet lived to middle age, their silhouettes broadened by pasta?

Carbohydrates, and especially refined ones like sugar, make you produce lots of extra insulin. I've been keeping my intake really low ever since I discovered this. I've cut out all starch such as potatoes, noodles, rice, bread and pasta.

As long as there's pasta and Chinese food in the world, I'm okay.

Grilled salmon and brown pasta works for me every time.

Everything I do, I want to take it to the farthest possible degree. I can't just do something the plain way. I don't cook a bowl of pasta; it has to be puff pastry swans.

Being from Staten Island and Brooklyn, I'm used to eating pasta and meatballs every single day.

I'd much rather eat pasta and drink wine than be a size 0.

I cannot starve myself. I'm a foodie! I make fabulous pastas, Indian food, parathas and club sandwiches!

I don't have to follow any special diet or count calories. I try to eat healthily and before a match I load up on pasta and salads. But I pretty much do what I want.

I'd take pasta over skinny any day. More importantly, I'd take health over looks.

I don't drink milk, and I don't eat bread, pasta or rice. But I eat a lot of meat, chicken, fish and salads.

If kids can learn how to make a simple Bolognese sauce, they will never go hungry. It's pretty easy to cook pasta, but a good sauce is way more useful.

I eat a lot of whole grains for breakfast, a lot of dried fruit. And my big thing is pasta. I do a lot of simple pasta, with great ingredients.

I love pasta with the homemade marinara sauce I had as a kid.

If you're going to buy pasta, you should buy dry pasta. If you're going to make it you can make the real thing, but you shouldn't buy fresh pasta.

I'm not a vegetarian, and I like filet minion which is sort of a guilty pleasure because I have vegetarian leanings. I eat that once in a while, but generally speaking I like to eat vegetarian things. I really like pasta. I really like bread with olive oil and garlic and I like salads.

If I'm in Rome for only 48 hours, I would consider it a sin against God to not eat cacio e pepe, the most uniquely Roman of pastas, in some crummy little joint where Romans eat. I'd much rather do that than go to the Vatican. That's Rome to me.

I love eating sushi and eating raw and clean - no pasta and bread. Low carbs is what works for me.

I might use milk if I was using a touch of milk to make like a lasagna or a baked pasta. But cream? That is totally not the way they do it in Italy, and it's not a very good thing. It's kind of a blanket for flavor.

I received a shot and broke my tooth. Unfortunately, we Italians only eat pasta al dente.

I've never deprived myself of anything. I've always thought if you need to lose weight, carry on eating what you like, just eat less. I don't agree with doing without pasta or bread, it's too harsh.