Perfecting Pasta | Celebrity MasterChef SA

Cooking pasta is one of the simpler tasks to tackle in the kitchen, but making it from scratch is another challenge altogether. Most startling of all is the infinite varieties you can make, with names that twist your tongue like spaghetti over a fork.

Listing all the different types would take longer than it does to make the pasta, but to give you an idea of how much is out there we can consider the different categories they have been placed into.

There are long noodles such as vermicelli, capellini and barbina; ribbon-cut noodles such as fettuccine, lasagna and tagliatelle, and short-cut extruded pasta such as penne, rigatoni and tuffoli. As if that weren’t enough, there’s also shaped, minute and filled pasta – all with a long to list of their own varieties.

The judges tasked the celebrities to make filled pasta in teams. Before they started, handy pointers were dished out to help them along. Chef Pete told them that “getting the consistency of the filling right is important, because if it’s too loose it won’t seal properly…and if it’s too hard you’re going to find it’s not very pliable and you’ll make holes in the pasta.”

Everyone was excited, but nerves were jangled too, as they would be racing against the clock to finish. Sade, however, was ebullient about the task, which was to be expected considering her half-Italian heritage. The origins of pasta reach far back in time, but its most renowned legacy is Italian.

Sade and Chris started the race for their respective teams, and the ensuing debacles proved that making pasta from scratch presents many challenges. If you want to have a go at it yourself, here are a few tips to help you avoid the same pitfalls the celebrities tumbled into:

• Remember to use extra flour when you’re rolling and cutting the dough –as chef Benny pointed out to Lunga – but be careful not to overdo it either! You don’t want to be rolling out crumbly dough.
• Use fresh eggs.
• When you get the hang of the process start experimenting! Toss in extra flavours and colours such as spinach, garlic, and chilli, or as chef Reuben pointed out, agnoloti infused with beetroot juice. You can also have fun with shapes by using cookie cutters, which is especially fun if you’re working with children.

Once your pasta is ready to be cooked there are other important things to keep in mind. If you don’t have the time or inclination to make the pasta from scratch and are using the ready-made kind, take heed of the following:

• Use the right-size pot to avoid clumpy, mushy or sticky pasta.
• Salt the water to season it and prevent slimy pasta.
• Stir the pasta to avoid clumping.
• Do not rinse the pasta once it is cooked, as it washes away flavour and stops the sauce from clinging properly.

When you have successfully completed your pasta, it’s time to consider the sauce, which gives you another chance to get creative. You can even go in the complete opposite direction and serve the pasta as a salad, concocting your own assortments with accompaniments like biltong, peppers, tuna, avocadoes or whatever your stomach desires.

Cooking pasta may be a simple process, but everything else that comes with it – from the sauces to the servings – makes it a culinary process that requires careful consideration and creativity from any chef.

Originally published on MasterChef SA.

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