In times like these, manifestos of all kinds are written, especially personal ones from the kitchen. Last week, The Guardian’s food columnist and Italophile, Rachel Roddy, seized this moment to leave her mark, penning eight rules for boiling pasta.
Rachel, who lives in Rome, borrowed inspiration from Sophia Loren's classic first cookbook from 1972, “In the Kitchen with Love,” in which the Academy Award-winning actress from Naples wrote her own rules for preparing pasta.
Admiring the glamor shots of Sophia posing in a homey kitchen, head resting on her hand, Rachel said there was no doubt the actress “was glowing and speaking directly to me.”
In the column, Rachel analyzed every aspect of butta la pasta, running through a list of principles, from the salt to the size of the stovetop flame. (There are a surprising amount of elements to pay attention to in 5-8 eight minutes!) She even breaks Sophia’s rules.
“This is where Sophia and I disagree – disagreement being a fundamental tenet of home cooking. She suggests adding oil to the cooking water to make the pasta more “mobile” when adding sauce; I keep back the starchy pasta cooking water, which I then add back to the dish if it needs loosening,” she wrote.
Well-drained pasta– Sophia’s recommendation– is a turn-off for Rachel. In her words, pasta “dripping like Colin Firth as Mr Darcy emerging from a pond can be a bonus.”
While some may conceive of butta la pasta as a passive act of waiting, Rachel proves just how much can happen.
Read all of her playful, yet persuasive, principles for pasta here.