Why Your Pasta Never Tastes Quite Right — Try These 10 Italian Tricks to Fix It

Look at the bottom of your pasta bowl after dinner. If there is a little red pool sitting there, your pasta and your sauce never met. In my mother Filomena's kitchen in Bensonhurst that never happened, because the pasta always went into the sauce, never the sauce onto the pasta. In this one I go through ten old Italian tricks, counted down from ten to one, and every one starts with plain instructions before I explain anything. Which shape carries which sauce, how much water you really need, how much pasta per person, bronze-cut pasta and the thumb test, how much salt goes in the water, why less sauce tastes like more, when to pull it early, the mug of cloudy water, the toss, and the bowl test. I even take back something I said for thirty years. No new pots, no gadgets. The same box of pasta, done the old way. So tell me where you are cooking from, and tell me the truth, were you taught to pour the sauce on top?