swill453 wrote:mc2fool wrote:But my core question remains, why do they also insist on cooking pasta with the lid off?
To be honest I'd never heard that they did. Their kitchens must be steamy places.
I bet they couldn't tell the difference in a blind taste test.
Scott.
Oh I've heard it, along with salting the water, many times. Most of my time in Italy was on various "camps" - archaeology digs, environmental projects, local history projects and the like - all involving communal living (usually in buildings, not in tents) and participants taking turns to cook for the group of 10-30, and at just about every one some international (i.e. non-Italian) cook was told off for cooking pasta with the lid on and/or not salting the water.
Mind you, I discovered that Italians tend to baulk at anything that isn't cooked like their mother did and/or isn't done in the traditional way (which is much the same thing)!
For one group I made saltimbocca but lacking sage I put some rosemary in the middle instead and you should have seen the raised eyebrows and mumbled comments about that ... although everybody, without exception, did, reluctantly and in the end, agree it was actually really good.