Photo Copyright © 2010, Skip Lombardi

We knew that Almost Italian dot com would eventually get around to Stuffed Shells and admit we procrastinated because we’d hoped that, by now, we’d have learned more about their “old country” origins. But, we have only a few hunches. As one of our history professors used to say, “the sources are silent.”

What we do know is that throughout the provinces of southern Italy, one will find pasta shells cradling mixtures of sheep cheeses, bitter greens, and even potatoes.

Along with tufoli, manicotti, and lumache (thick shell-shapes that look a little like French escargot), conchiglione are the only dry pasta shapes that, once par-boiled, become a large enough receptacle for stuffing. And here we may have a clue to their invention. The cowrie-shell shape with its ridged exterior would be awkward to form by hand, and this is one reason we suspect large pasta shells to be a mid-20th century innovation. Indeed, conchiglione appear only as machine-made forms.

Photo Copyright © 2010, Skip Lombardi

Usually sold as “Jumbo Shells,” conchiglione, (the Italian suffix—one denotes that they’re bigger than mere conchiglie,) are thick-walled—tough enough to stand up to boiling, handling during the stuffing process, and then baking. We think the shape was developed as a convenience.

By the 1950′s fewer women in both Italy and the Americas remained home to roll out the soft egg doughs for ravioli and other stuffed pastas that are best quickly boiled. A dry pasta form that could withstand less delicate (dare we say, more haphazard or rushed?) handling would have been a boon to the busy homemaker who might also hold down a full-time job in a factory or office. Casseroles and baked pastas, which could be kept warm and served to individual family members as they came home at staggered times, suited the less leisurely weekday suppers of America’s post-War suburbia. (We find no references in pre-World War II cookbooks—in Italian or English—to stuffed shells.)

Photo Copyright © 2010, Skip Lombardi

The ever-changing foodways of America’s many immigrant populations sometimes enjoy surprising intersections. Twenty years ago, I was struck by the resourcefulness of a young Polish immigrant with a grad student husband and two toddlers. She was not a seasoned cook, but her heart and hospitality were what counted when she invited us for a dinner of pierogi—Polish pasta half-moons commonly stuffed with fried onions, mild white cheese, potatoes, cabbage, and/or ground meat. Rather than making her own dough, our hostess had simply spooned ricotta and fried onions into—you guessed it—jumbo pasta shells (which she’d previously boiled far beyond any semblance of al dente). Fast-forwarding to the Internet era—you’ll now find scores of “pierogi” recipes that fill pasta shells with everything from mashed potatoes and shredded cheddar to Mexican taco-seasoned beef to curried tuna fish salad.

While these are not treatments we would recommend, and indeed, your nonna would reach for her bottle of herbal digestivo if you so much as whispered these variations to her—we discuss them because, for better or worse, they are part of the story of what has happened to Italian food outside Italy.

And though we have good reason to fear that somewhere out there lurk Buffalo Chicken-stuffed Shells Fra Diavolo, we trust they are consigned to an appropriate circle of the netherworld.

Photo Copyright © 2010, Skip Lombardi

Remember those uncomplicated childhood days at the beach. Keep your shells simple, and enjoy them warm from the oven, not microwaved hours later. Turn off the TV, sit down at the table, and make Nonna proud.

Stuffed Shells

Ingredients:

1 10 oz. Package chopped, frozen spinach, thawed
2 oz. Prosciutto, finely diced (1/4- inch)
Freshly ground black pepper
1/2 Tsp. peperoncino (red chili flakes)
1 Large egg
1 1/2 Cups whole milk ricotta
1 oz. Parmigiano freshly grated
Freshly grated nutmeg

2 – 2 1/2 Cups My Grandmother’s Marinara Sauce
Additional Parmigiano
4 Tbsp. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped

20 Conchiglione, jumbo pasta shells (about 8-9 oz)
Salt

Preparation:

The Filling:

Unwrap the thawed spinach, and place it to drain in a strainer set over a bowl.

Meanwhile, heat a small sauté pan over medium heat, then add the prosciutto. Sauté until it has crisped slightly, rendering some of its fat. Add the peperoncino and a few grinds of black pepper black pepper and sauté for another minute. Remove pan from heat and reserve.

Break the egg into a large bowl, and beat thoroughly. Add the ricotta and Parmigiano, stirring gently to blend with the egg.

Using your hands, squeeze as much liquid as possible from the spinach, chop roughly and add to the ricotta mixture.

Grate approximately 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg into the filling, (Freshly grated nutmeg makes a real difference!) Add the reserved prosciutto. Stir thoroughly to combine. Cover the bowl and refrigerate for at least an hour. (You may do this step up to one day ahead of stuffing the shells.)

Precooking the shells: (Radical technique—but it works and lessens the chance you will damage or overcook your shells.)

Bring 2 quarts of water to a boil in a heavy, lidded saucepan. When water reaches a full, rolling boil, add 1 1/2 tsp. salt; stir to dissolve. Gently sink the shells a few at a time into the pot so that all are completely submerged.

TURN OFF THE BURNER, place the lid on the pot and set the timer for 4 minutes.

After 4 minutes, with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula, gently stir the shells. Replace the lid and set the timer for 2 minutes.

After 2 minutes, the shells will be UNDERCOOKED, not al dente. You want them just pliable enough to stuff. With a slotted spoon, remove the shells from the water and place them in a strainer.

Preheat oven to 375 F.

Ladle enough marinara sauce (about a half-cup), into the bottom of an oven-proof dish.

With a dessert or iced-tea spoon, take a shell and fill it with about 2 tablespoons of the ricotta-spinach mixture. Set the shells, filling-side facing up, into the baking dish as you stuff them.

Arrange shells side by side so they touch each other and stay in place. When you have stuffed all the shells, carefully spoon additional marinara over the shells, leaving some of the filling exposed (see photo).

In the middle of the oven, bake the shells, uncovered, for 20-25 minutes.

For each serving, use a large spoon to gently remove 3 or 4 shells and a little sauce into a shallow bowl. Dust with a little more Parmigiano and chopped parsley.

Serves 4 – 6 as a very rich pasta course.

Most connoisseurs of the American red sauce repertoire would deem Mussels Posillipo to be a relatively recent addition to the menu.

Copyright © 2009, Skip Lombardi

A little research reveals that Florence Fabricant had discussed Mussels Posillipo in The New York Times in 1978, and I know that I had not heard the name until the early-1980′s, when I lived in Boston’s North End.

I was, however, very well acquainted with the combination of mussels with marinara sauce, because it had been one of grandfather’s signature dishes. When I was growing up in Connecticut in the 1950′s, I recall him and other members of our Sicilian community combining shellfish with whatever homemade tomato sauce anyone happened to have in the refrigerator.

In the summer, my grandfather (‘Pop’ to his grandchildren) engaged in marine foraging whose rewards were always welcome at the LaBella table…

As I wrote in my first cookbook about growing up in the kitchen of Italian immigrants:

In our family, Pop’s creation was simply “mussels with tomato sauce,” or cozze alla marinara if we were going to speak proper Italian. Posillipo was terra incognita to us Sicilians, but obviously, it meant something to somone…

View of the Bay of Naples and Vesuvius from Posillipo

Turns out that Posillipo is a rather toney suburb of Naples; it was developed during the 19^th century by those affluent enough to live and build out of town, on a high bluff with a view of that famous bay. It was definitely not the sort of place frequented by most of the Napoletani immigrants to North America.

However, Posillipo is exactly the sort of place that second or third- generation Italian-American GIs and sailors from the Sixth Fleet would visit for their R & R. In short, just the sort of romantic location you’d long remember… especially if you went back home and joined the team at your family’s restaurant in Hoboken.

Polsillipo, a little bit exotic and just the right seasoning for a delicious dish….

So think of any checkered-tablecloth restaurant with walls covered in sports memorabilia, signed photos, and one of those less-than-Leonardo landscapes of Vesuvius soaring above the Bay of Naples. The clue is right there…

Posillipo—the origin of the name (like so many in southern Italy) is from the ancient Greek; no surprise. But the meaning of pausílypon, “a respite from worry or pain,” is both ironic and completely appropriate for this posh, high-rent district.

For most who left Italy in the age of immigration, America was quite a respite indeed. Consider that so many who escaped destitution and famine in the Mezzogiorno not only survived the transatlantic crossing in steerage but also became the parents and grandparents of people like me, Americans who have never known hunger. That those people, i poveri, left Italy to found the culinary culture we celebrate here on AlmostItalian.com is truly a wonder.

And a dish that just happens to be red, white and blue is certainly a fitting tribute to that irony.

Ingredients:

Olive oil
1 Small onion, finely chopped
4 Cloves garlic, minced
1 Cup dry white wine
2 Cups my grandmother’s tomato sauce
4 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped
4 Tbs. Fresh basil, finely chopped
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
½ tsp. Crushed red pepper flakes
30 – 36 Mussels, scrubbed and debearded

1 Lb. Linguine or Spaghetti
4 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped

Preparation:

Heat a large (4 – 6 qt.) pot over medium heat, then add enough olive oil to cover the bottom of the pot. Add the onion and garlic, and cook until the onions become translucent.

Raise the heat to high and add the wine. Boil for a minute or two to evaporate the alcohol.

Add the tomato sauce, then the parsley and basil. Taste for seasoning, and add salt and pepper as necessary. Add the red pepper flakes. Lower the heat, and simmer the sauce for approximately 10 minutes.

As the sauce is simmering, bring a large pot of salted water (at least six quarts) to the boil.

Add the pasta to the boiling water.

As the pasta cooks, add the mussels to the marinara. Cover and simmer until the mussels have opened; about 5 minutes. Discard any mussels that have not opened after 5 minutes.

When the pasta has reached the al dente state (after approximately 10 minutes) drain in a colander.

To Serve:

This is a dish that truly wants to be served family-style.

Pour the pasta onto a platter or into a large bowl. With a large spoon or ladle, scoop the mussels from the sauce and mound them atop the pasta. Ladle the sauce over the mussels and the pasta. Garnish with the additional parsley. (Provide an empty bowl for discarded shells.)

Serves four

Or, to put it another way: Americans seeking to “eat Italian” went from marinara to cream sauces to pesto in less than two decades.

Copyright © 2009, Skip Lombardi

We’ve written about the tomato-free pasta treatments that captured the attention of sophisticates because they were deemed to to be “lighter.” Pastas in pale sauces were offered as northern Italian and seen as more subtle and refined than southern Italian pasta swimming in marinara.

By this time, a third generation of Italian-Americans were pushing out the boundaries of “traditional” dishes by inventing new ones as certain ingredients, such as imported cheeses and artisanal fresh pasta, became easier to find.

Alfredo Viazzi—while not the Alfredo, the one who originated the dish in 1917—certainly rode the “white sauce” wave. During the ’70′s, Viazzi could barely keep up with the orders for his own interpretation of Fettucine Alfredo, served at his Greenwich Village trattoria, da Alfredo. (We hasten to clarify that pasta Alfredo does NOT consist of pasta and a separate sauce. Rather, the dish is simply hot pasta tossed with abundant butter and Parmesan, just before serving. Nonetheless, this has not kept dozens of food manufacturers from the transgression of offering various comestibles, including pizza, with “Alfredo sauce.”)

Some Italian-American inventions sprang from the plentiful availability of prepped components. Boneless chicken breasts and frozen broccoli were inexpensive and available year ’round—a boon for restaurateurs striving to consistently offer favorite dishes. And chicken breasts had the added attraction of their light color. It wasn’t long before Chicken, Ziti and Broccoli, like a distant cousin claiming kinship, managed to find its way onto menus in red sauce joints across the country.

Chicken Caesar Salad could be found in the Italian “continental” restaurant with valet parking and a maitre d’ as well as in the smallest strip-mall luncheonette with checked vinyl tablecloths. In just a few years, this salad was considered an “old Italian favorite” despite the fact that most pre-WWI immigrants had never tasted chicken back in Italy.

Meanwhile by 1980, Americans had discovered pesto… The tricolore was complete and waving across North America.

Our first recollection of this seductive substance goes back to 1973 when we saw the late Franco and Margaret Romagnoli prepare Pesto alla Genovese on The Romagnolis’ Table, their PBS television program. Franco followed tradition and made it with a mortar and pestle, while Margaret demonstrated the wonders of that revolutionary new kitchen device, the “food processor…”

But basil pesto, a specialty of Liguria, though delicious and easily made, didn’t secure its place on Italian-American menus immediately. It was simply a question of supply: very few American farmers were cultivating basil as a crop in the ’70′s. A medium-sized restaurant kitchen would have required a bushel or more of fresh basil daily in order to add linguine al pesto to the menu. But once farmers realized they had a market, basil, the pot-herb that had delicately scented a century of Italian-American cooking, was seen as a green whose production could be measured in acreage. Production caught up with demand, and basil pesto stepped up to take its place alongside marinara.

Before the commercial growers in California, Arizona, and New Mexico had established basil production on a large scale, there was a period of green sauces that were not so basil-dependent. Creative substitutions proliferated; newspapers and magazines were filled with tricks for extending that little bit of basil from one’s windowbox herb garden and for making parsley and frozen spinach pesto (which is simply Italian for “something which has been pounded,” usually with a mortar and pestle). Our focus here is on pesto made with basil.

Given chicken’s prominence on Italian-American menus and the long-standing custom of most red sauce joints to serve “pasta on the side,” it was logical that the side dish would one day come with pesto. Once they had a reliable supply of basil, cooks could apply pesto to a variety of foods that had never before been thus annointed. The combination of chicken with pasta al pesto was simply waiting to happen.

The most common restaurant preparation involves sautéed chicken breasts. However, we prefer the deeper flavor of dark meat that has been grilled. Our recipe gains its depth from grilled chicken thighs, which, not incidentally, are cheaper than breasts and easier to grill and bone.

If you’re inaugurating your grill this Memorial Day, it is worth grilling extra chicken pieces just to make this dish in the days following the holiday weekend. With little effort, you’ll have completed the first step for an over-the-top dish that has earned its place in the Italian-American repertoire.

For the pesto itself: Ligurians use walnuts and/or pine-nuts and Pecorino Romano, not Parmesan. There is no standard recipe—not in Italy, nor among Americans. With a little thought, a wonderful condiment can be achieved using what’s available. (One of us likes to use roasted sunflower seeds in place of the walnuts.) Sine qua non for this neo-classic are copious amounts of fresh green basil leaves.

Ingredients:

4-6 Grilled chicken thighs (skin left on)

3/4 Cup walnuts, pecans, or raw sunflower seeds
2 — 3 Medium-sized cloves garlic, peeled
3 Cups fresh basil leaves, loosely packed
4 — 5 Tbs. Extra-virgin olive oil
1 Cup freshly grated Parmesan or Pecorino Romano
Salt & freshly ground black pepper

Hot pasta water, at least 1 cup, reserved

2 – 3 Tbs. Whole pignoli (pine nuts) for garnish (optional)

1 Lb. pasta. We paired the chicken with farfalle (bow-ties). Fettucine or linguine also work well.

Preparation:

Heat a toaster oven to 325 F. Spread the raw shelled nuts or sunflower seeds on a sheet of foil or tray in the toaster oven, or dry roast them in a pan over medium heat on the stove. Stir occasionally and watch them constantly, as they burn easily. Roast until they are lightly browned and fragrant (7-10 minutes). If you are using the pignoli, repeat steps separately, as pignoli toast more quickly. Remove all toasted nuts and seeds from the heat and set aside to cool. Reserve any pignoli for garnish.

In a food processor fitted with the metal blade, chop the garlic. Add the cooled nuts and pulse to chop. Add a handful of basil and pulse, repeating until you have chopped it all. With a spatula, scrape down the sides of the processor. Add half the grated cheese and black pepper. Pulse for approximately 1 second, two or three times.

With the motor running, slowly pour 2 — 3 Tbsp of the oil through the feed-tube into the swirling pesto. Stop the motor, scrape down the sides, and taste for salt.

Meanwhile, slice the grilled chicken into pieces no larger than 1″ x 2″ and set aside

Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil and cook 1 lb of pasta until al dente. Drain and reserve at least a cup of the starchy cooking water at the bottom of the pot.

In a bowl large enough to hold all the pasta (or the empty cooking pot itself), spread 1 Tbsp of olive oil, 2 Tbsp of the pesto and 2 Tbsp of the hot pasta water to coat the bottom of the bowl. Add the hot, drained pasta and chicken slices to the bowl.

With two wooden spoons or tongs, gently turn the pasta in the bowl, adding the rest of the pesto gradually so it does not clump. Add about 1/4 cup of the pasta water to the food processor to rinse down the sides and pour that into the pasta Gently turn over the pasta until it is evenly coated with pesto.

Divide into four shallow bowls and sprinkle with the remaining cheese. Garnish each serving with a few toasted pignoli.

Serves four.

During the Renaissance and heydey of Genoese and Venetian trade with the Ottoman Empire, Italy’s urban centers were cauldrons of food fusion.

But during the Age of Discovery, the Italian peninsula was left behind. Columbus sailed for the Spanish crown, not Italy. And after the seismic culinary effects of the introduction of the tomato and pepper, those New World interlopers that forever altered all Mediterranean cuisines, Italians settled down to what they already knew. Indeed, they were among the last in the Mediterranean to embrace tomatoes, which were not staples in the Mezzogiorno until well into the 18^th century.

Copyright © 2009, Skip Lombardi

This is all the back-drop to Italian food in the post-industrial age. To put it simply: Food throughout the Italian peninsula has not changed with anything like the speed that it has in many other parts of the world.

Likewise, Italian-American cuisine has remained remarkably static since its birth. Spaghetti with Meatballs served in an immigrants’ boarding house at the turn of the 20^th century was pretty much the same dish served in a wise-guy café in Hoboken in the 1970′s. But once they began to imagine and adapt dishes like Pasta Primavera, Penne alla Vodka, and cold pasta salads, Italian-American restaurant chefs expanded menus that had once been limited to variations of pasta with red sauce.

Let’s look at a Roman classic, Pasta alla Carbonara, as a starting point. Sometime in the past 30 years, an inventive chef was inspired to replace the requisite guanciale, cured pork jowl, with smoked salmon. Thus was born Smoked Salmon alla Carbonara.

We don’t have that first printed recipe, but the Internet is littered with permutations we couldn’t (or maybe, shouldn’t) have imagined. On March 17, 1982, the St. Petersburg, Florida, Evening Independent published a recipe for “Salmon Carbonara” featuring canned salmon and Parmesan cheese. (You may easily surmise that, in 1982, that cheese would have been the industrial product in the shiny green foil cylinder.) Needless to say, any Old World Italian would have considered the combination of seafood and cheese an infamita of the highest order.

Think back to the 1980′s… recall the Silver Palate cookbooks and that decade of decadence when cream ruled. Italian-American restaurants attempting to cultivate a more sophisticated clientele were serving pasta without red sauce. Pasta presentations in “a Parmesan cream sauce” appear to have gained favor because they were “lighter” (only in color, for they were certainly no lighter in calories) and because they were more delicately flavored than dishes in a garlicky marinara. Compared to a red-sauce dish, these creamy pastas seemed to express urbane luxury, just what the upscale Italian-American restaurant diner wanted to experience.

Curiously, we found many of that period’s recipes included peas, a reminder of the New England tradition of Salmon and Peas on the 4^th of July. Though these recipes stopped short of Tuna Noodle Casserole, there were some unfortunate similarities.

Despite its wayward past, we think that Salmon alla Carbonara deserves rehabilitation.

We wanted our rendition to be closer to the original Italian alla Carbonara treatment, named for the “charcoal-maker’s wife.” We’ve kept it simple. In the original, guanciale (or pancetta) is rendered and crisped, the fat and crispy bits added to beaten eggs. Abundant black pepper and grated Parmesan go into the mix. At the last minute, the heat and starch of the cooked pasta, straight from the collander, thicken and partially cook the beaten-egg mixture. The result is an an unctuous sauce that clings to every strand of spaghetti, linguine, or fettuccine.

Our version omits the guanciale and also the Parmesan—in the Italian tradition of keeping cheese far away from fish and seafood.

But without the hot fat to help emulsify the eggs, the sauce lacks body. So, we’ve added just a little sour cream. Smoked salmon, sliced into strips, requires no further cooking and replaces the pork to yield a quick and elegant meal. Since the stove is needed only to boil the pasta water, the dish is perfect for a warm evening.

Ingredients:

2 Large eggs
1/4 Cup sour cream
Freshly ground black pepper
4 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped
4 Tbs. Bermuda onion, finely diced
1/2 Lb. Linguine or fettuccine
6 oz. Smoked salmon, cut into ribbons 1/4 inch wide

Preparation:

Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil.

Break the eggs into a large bowl, and with the back of a fork or a whisk, beat them thoroughly. Beat in the sour cream. Add four or five grinds of black pepper, the parsley, and the onion.

When the water has come to a boil, add the pasta and cook until it reaches the al dente state.

Drain the pasta in a collander and immediately add to the egg mixture. Stir vigorously with tongs or a wooden spoon. This will cook the egg mixture as it comes into contact with the hot pasta.

When the pasta is thoroughly coated, gently stir in the salmon. Divide the pasta equally between two dinner plates and garnish with additional parsley.

Serves two.

A thoughtful reader pointed us to a blog post by cooking athourity/food scientist Harold McGhee who provided validation for our cooking method as well as some other tips for producing great pasta while saving energy.

I confess that when it comes to Italian food, I’m a reactionary. With my forebears’ culinary traditions predating the Medicis, I feel entitled. When I make my grandmother’s recipes, I do them the way she did. (I still wear L. L. Bean’s blue, oxford-cloth, button-down-collar shirts, the same brand I wore in junior high, though that’s a story for another time…)

When my grandmother cooked pasta, she used a large pot filled nearly to the brim with salted water. (Hers was so large that she needed help to set it on the stove.) And if her example weren’t sufficient, the late Franco and Margaret Romagnoli, who helped me expand my view of Italian food beyond Sicilian-American, trumpeted the necessity to cook pasta in “a capacious pot with copious amounts of salted water.”

Copyright © 2009, Skip Lombardi

And still, the iconic Lydia Bastianich recommends at least four (better yet, six, quarts of water) per pound of pasta. These are the exacting standards of my mentors. And until quite recently, they were mine…

My enlightenment occurred at one of the chain close-out stores where I regularly buy discounted treats like Croatian eggplant spread and hecho en Mexico hot sauce. I found myself drawn to a large display of Lexan plastic tubes, cooking devices whose packages promised fast, fool-proof cooking of everything from greenbeans to kielbasa.

But what really caught my attention was the name: Pasta Perfect ™ “as seen on TV.” I imagined the sort of infomercial that always boasts it has “operators standing by.” The sheer silliness of it all was as appalling as it was intriguing. That any self-respecting Italian would attempt to cook a pound of pasta in a quart of still water! My co-author (whose attitude towards traditions, even Italian traditions, is that they are merely suggestions—not mandates) was beside me, saying, “We’ve got to write about this. You know we do. ”

I wondered why…

Like many others, I’ve become a lot more energy-conscious over the past decade. And considering the amount of pasta I cook, I’ve often pondered how much energy it takes to cook this Italian staple, that is, to bring six quarts of water to a “full rolling boil” before I’ve even dropped in the pasta, which then cooks for seven to ten minutes. So while “receptive” might not be the precise term for my initial attitude towards Pasta Perfect, I was persuaded that it might be worth some consideration.

But despite my suspicion that I may have a big sign around my neck that reads, “Rube,” I wasn’t immediately prepared to part with even $5.95 to find pasta Nirvana in a Lexan tube.

Holly and I decided that an experiment was in order. Back in her kitchen, we took an 8-cup vintage Fire King Jade-ite mixing bowl and put in a teaspoon of salt and a half-pound of farfalle. This pasta, shaped like bow-ties, is notoriously unpredictable to cook in any amount of water. (The corners tend to get overcooked and break off before the pinched centers are done.)

I brought approximately one quart of water to a full rolling boil, poured it over the pasta, gave it a quick stir, and covered the bowl with plastic wrap and a thick kitchen towel (thinking that the towel would provide additional insulation). Following the directions we’d read back at the store (those that came with the Pasta Perfect we had not purchased), we set the timer for eleven minutes. Because Jade-ite is opaque, we were unable to see whatever alchemy was in progress. We poured a couple of glasses of vino and watched the clock.

Given my skepticism, I was astonished that the pasta had cooked to any point of edibility. But to find it exquisitely al dente was mind-boggling! It just didn’t seem reasonable that pasta that sat in still water for eleven minutes could cook to the same degree of doneness as pasta cooked for eight minutes in rapidly boiling water. How could generations of Italians not have known this?

But there we were. We looked at each other and said, “We need to tell Harold McGee and to ask him WHY.” And we did—emailing him about a two and a half years ago, in the fall of 2006.

We never heard back from him, but who knows what the reigning American kitchen scientist’s SPAM filter is like. Maybe he doesn’t watch late-night shopping channels… Chances are pretty good he’d never heard of a Chinese-made plastic cylinder for cooking pasta—or of us…

But back then, we were undaunted and more than a little curious. Because of that experiment with the covered bowl, we did go back to purchase the Pasta Perfect. (We confess: we bought two of them, one for each house.)

Our first test of the real Pasta Perfect wasn’t quite perfect. It certainly wouldn’t have been suitable for TV. Again, following the tips in the “handy” recipe booklet that came with our “utensil,” we used a half-pound of linguine. After the magic eleven minutes had elapsed, the pasta was indeed suitably al dente, but we found it slightly gummy. Then, we tried a half-pound of penne rigate for the recommended fourteen minutes. Pasta Perfect’s instructions give specific times for different pasta shapes. Again, we found this tubular pasta gummy, and this time, slightly undercooked. So, this was not noodle Nirvana, at least not yet. We persevered.

What we couldn’t deny was that we were saving at least ten minutes of energy to keep an electric burner on high heat every time we cooked pasta. Multiplying that by a few bowls of linguine with clam sauce, the savings would be substantial. Meanwhile, my co-author, who has another life organizing yacht charters in the Mediterranean, was thinking of conservation of fresh water aboard a sailboat. A lot of pasta gets served on her summertime charters… and Pasta Perfect was lightweight,virtually unbreakable, more compact than a large kettle…

So it seemed to us that Pasta Perfect could have a place among our kitchen armamentaria after all.

As Mario Batali has demonstrated on Food TV, Italians frequently finish cooking pasta in the sauce in which it is to be served. That is, the chef will cook the pasta to near-completion in boiling water, then add the drained pasta to a pan of sauce to finish cooking. The pasta absorbs both flavor and color from the sauce and develops an unctuous quality that mere boiling cannot achieve.

We’ve developed a routine in which we use the Pasta Perfect technique, but ONLY IF we are going to make a sauce in which it would be appropriate to finish cooking our pasta.

I’ve been feeling especially virtuous about the electricity we’re saving. However, as the author of two Italian-American cookbooks, I’ve kept mum on this heretical way of cooking pasta all the while thinking of how I could break the news to other traditionalists.

In the meantime, I must admit we’ve been making some pretty good pasta. Well, mostly…

I had a small lapse the last time I made Pasta alla Carbonara. This is a dish in which the hot pasta is supposed to cook the sauce. And because the sauce consists of crisped pancetta, Parmesan, lots of freshly-ground black pepper, and beaten raw eggs, one can understand why it is important that the pasta be VERY HOT indeed.

Perhaps I was distracted by another project which entailed the sixth or seventh change of soaking water for my salt-cod? (Look for our baccalà recipe in a week or so.) In any case, it never crossed my mind that pasta cooked in a closed, insulated vessel, and fully cooked “to the tooth,” would not be hot enough to cook and thicken the egg mixture when all the ingredients were combined.

We didn’t wind up with any egg-borne ailments, but the eggs stayed runny and never gave the spaghetti the rich coating that makes the dish a success.

Moral of the story: Don’t use Pasta Perfect for Pasta alla Carbonara.

In fact, you don’t have to use Pasta Perfect or any of its plastic clones (Pasta Pleasure, Pasta Express, Clear-Cook, etc.) for anything, though the see-through tubes are nice for storing pasta. Here’s how to use the Pasta Perfect cooking method with vessels you already own:

Take a lidded 2-3 quart saucepan with some heft. Heat-proof glass, enameled cast-iron, anodized aluminum, heavy stainless all work well. Be sure it’s at least as heavy as as RevereWare.

For a half-pound of pasta, use a 8 cups of water; for a full pound, you may use a little bit more (say, 10 cups) because you want to retain the heat from the boiled water.

Bring the water to a rolling boil, then stir in at least a teaspoon of salt and the dry pasta. Turn off the heat; set a timer according to the pasta package instructions for al dente doneness. Put the lid on the pot and stick around. Half-way through the countdown, grab a wooden spoon or chopstick and quickly stir the pasta (for about 5 seconds). Immediately replace the lid to conserve the heat. Get the rest of your dish ready.

When the timer goes off, your pasta is done—or done enough. Drain* it and add to whatever warmed sauce you have waiting. Combine pasta and sauce over low heat for up to two minutes. Sit down to a perfectly cooked bowl of pasta and know that your carbon footprint is a little smaller than it might have been.

We’d been planning to write up this culinary infàmita for over two years… but we thought we’d save it as a pick-me-up for us and the blog when we’d exhausted all the Italian-American chicken recipes…

If we’d heard back from Harold McGee in the fall of 2006, we’d have had him over for a bowl of pasta.

Maybe now he’ll respond to his fans… In the meantime, we’ll get the water boiling.