Chef Lorenzo Boni has had a love affair with pasta since childhood. After developing his cooking techniques in Italian and European kitchens, and managing his own restaurant in his native Bologna, he found his dream job at Barilla, the leading pasta maker in Italy and the world. Among his many roles as Executive Chef for Barilla America since 2003, he is responsible for culinary projects, he is a passionate spokesperson for Barilla and is a Italian Food Culture Educator all over the world. He talks about his love for pasta, shares his cooking techniques and recommends healthy, delicious and easy go-to recipes that will make anyone seems like an expert chef in the kitchen.
Where does your passion for Italian food comes from?
I was born in Bologna in Italy, my dad was very passionate about food and cooking and my mom’s side of the family were bakers, so I guess it came naturally for me to love food. Since I was a kid, I would make fresh pasta along with my parents and experience the great regional cuisines of Italy while traveling on vacation. I went to a culinary institute in Rimini, and then started traveling throughout Europe to learn different cooking techniques. I worked in restaurants and hotels for about twenty years and for a while I had my own restaurant in Bologna. When I started working for Barilla, they hired me as a consultant once a week to develop recipes in their headquarters in Parma while I continued to run my restaurant. I finally decided to join Barilla full-time, and it just happened that right after I sold my restaurant, they offered me a job as Executive Chef for Barilla America. I moved here in 2004.
What do you like of your job as Barilla Executive Chef for North America?
Growing up in Italy, you love pasta because it’s the base of your diet and it’s what you eat every day. Joining Barilla was like a dream coming true for me because it is the number one pasta brand of Italy. I love what I’m doing in the company because it’s very diversified. I technically work in research and development, so I am responsible for creating the gold standards of our products. In reality, I also consult in many departments of the company: imports, sales, marketing, public relations and events. We collaborate with restaurants and while my title is Executive chef for North America, I also support the brand in Canada, Mexico and Brazil.
Barilla has great recipe builders on their website with simple how-to-do instructions.
Is there any particular pasta recipe for a beginners that you would recommend starting with?
Our recipe builders are designed for people who don’t necessarily have a great amount of experience in cooking. It’s kind of a mix and match tool that allows you pick your ingredients and build your own recipe, and it’s very easy to follow. We are inspired by cuisines from different regions in the world, but if I were to pick one, it would naturally be Italian. Based on the Italian recipe builder, I would first pick my pasta. Then, I would use extra virgin olive oil, because that’s the base of our diet, cooking it with a little bit of onion, slowly simmered for a few minutes to keep it nice and sweet, and then as a protein, I would add shrimp. Right after, paying attention to not overcook the shrimp, I would add some cherry tomatoes and broccoli florets and toss everything together. The recipe builder gives you the option to add a cheese but in this case I would skip it. In this country, I know a lot of people have no problem pairing cheese with seafood, but it’s not my favorite combination. I would just finish it off with fresh aromatic herbs such as basil.
How does pasta fit in a balanced diet?
In Italy, most of the population is pretty fit, and they eat pasta every day. It is all about portion control. We recommend two ounces of dry pasta per person, or one cup of cooked pasta, about the size of a baseball, for each serving. How you cook the pasta is very important as well, that’s what we are trying to communicate with these recipe builders. As long as you prepare your pasta with a lot of vegetables, lean meats, or a little bit of cheese, using extra virgin olive oil rather than animal fat, aromatic herbs to boost the flavor, you don’t need that add much salt and can keep the sodium intake low. Finally, pasta shouldn’t be a meal by itself, you could have a little bit of fruit, some more vegetables cooked in a different way, or, if you didn’t have any protein in your pasta dish, you can have a slice of prosciutto on the side. It’s all about variety and healthy ingredients.
Can give us a few tips on how to prepare the perfect pasta al dente?
First of all, I recommend using a good amount of water. You need a gallon of water for a box of pasta. I suggest adding about 1 tablespoon and 1 teaspoon of salt for each gallon of water, it will give flavor, and it is the right intake of sodium for your diet. If possible, use sea salt, it has a nice natural flavor. The pasta needs to be hard-boiling the whole time. Follow the cooking times on the box of the pasta, they are perfect, if you strain the pasta and serve it as we recommend it, it’s going to be good. You can also keep your pasta slightly undercooked, removing it a couple of minutes before the recommended cook time, while reserving about a cup of cooking water on the side. You then mix the pasta and the sauce all together on the stovetop for a minute or two, and if it needs extra cooking, you can always add some of the reserved water to finish it up. The pasta dish really comes together nicely with this technique, better than just adding a dollop of sauce or the pasta like many people do. If you add the cheese at the end, always do it off fire because the cheese needs a lower temperature than the boiling point to melt evenly. If you’re cooking the cheese, it will get grainy and clumpy, so you want to make sure that your pasta cools down so that it’s slightly lower than boiling point. When your pasta is done, just turn off the heat, wait 30 seconds, and then add the cheese. It will melt nicely and you will create a creamy texture in your sauce. Another tip that I recommend is to use just a little bit of olive oil to start the sauce, and then drizzle it raw over the pasta near the end to add some freshness rather than cooking it all and losing its benefits. And speaking of olive oil, no need to put any in the water! Great quality pasta such as Barilla doesn’t clump up when cooking.
And never break the spaghetti?
Breaking the spaghetti is another habit, an ancient one, which made sense when drying the pasta was done outdoor under the sun, hanging on wood sticks, and the spaghetti used to be really long. So once the pasta was dried and ready to be sold, the spaghetti were super long and you had to break them to be able to fit them inside the pot. But then, actually, Barilla was a pioneer in Italy for this, they invented the box with pre-cut pasta in the 1930s, right before the second world war.
What is your personal favorite pasta dish?
While I come from Bologna, where the food is very rich, I’m going to go with a very light and Mediterranean type of pasta, spaghetti with clams. I make it with a little bit of garlic, extra virgin olive oil, a touch of white wine to give a bit of acidity, chopped Italian parsley, and finished with a tiny amount of bottarga.