August 22, 2006
Al Dente
One of the hard parts about cooking is that so much of it is based on knowledge that is only trasmissible through shared experience. Al dente pasta is a good example of this. Every cookbook says the same thing - to cook pasta "al dente", meaning it should not be too soft. Of course, how much is too soft, or how much is too hard? I used to cook my pasta fairly soft. After eating at some nice Italian restaurants in New York, I realized that my pasta was way too soft, so I cooked it much firmer, and found I enjoyed it a lot. Was this al dente? Or too much, or too little? First of all, I've never been to Italy, so I have nothing to compare my pasta against. Second, even in Italy, there probably is a fair amount of disagreement, something I imagine Italian grandmas bicker about while playing canasta.
When I first had pasta that was fairly firm, it was a revelation. I had a similar revelation a few months ago when eating at a restaurant in the West Village called BellaVitae. They had a pasta there that was beyond any al-dente that I've had. The spaghetti was actually cooked just to the point of having a slight crunch in the center, which was a delightful surprise. Surprisingly, they did this with the rest of the pasta not tasting undercooked at all. I'm not sure how they did it, perhaps they just have the timing down to the millisecond in which it perfectly cooked. Perfectly cooked, that is, if you like your pasta a bit crunchy.
But is that al dente? I may never know, and in fact such a thing may be unknowable, and maybe not even a question work asking, because there is no real standard on this.
Posted by ahyatt at August 22, 2006 11:39 PM