Category: History

If a month is both Noodle Month and Sauce Month, surely the obvious thing is to write about which sauce goes with which pasta. But then I thought – “Wait, Pasta Month is October. What’s the difference between noodles and pasta?” So off I went to find out.

I can’t say I am much the wiser for  the effort. I assumed (for instinctive reasons rather than actual knowledge) that all pasta was noodles but not all noodles were pasta. Turns out I might be right – or it might be the other way around. It depends on where you live and who you’re talking to (and what site you believe most).

Bottom line for today though – I did confirm that posting pasta information would be relevant both during Noodle Month and Pasta Month. So I can proceed with my saucy plans for this post.

Pasta – dried pasta that is – is very much a staple in our house, as it is in a lot of people’s homes. It’s relatively cheap, comes in a variety of shapes and sizes, can be served in a wide variety of ways and keeps for ages and ages without going bad. We always have a few shapes on hand: linguine (which we prefer to spaghetti), fusilli, lasagna, penne. Why so many? Well, certain shapes handle certain sauces better than others and some hold up better than others in certain types of dishes.

So what shapes go with what? Here are some (but by no means all) of the combinations we use.

• Fusilli – these twisty shapes hold onto sauce particularly well so you can use almost anything with them. Use it pasta bakes, oil-based sauces, cheese or cream sauces, meat sauce, pesto – even in pasta salads and soups.
• Lasagna – the flat surface doesn’t hold slippery sauces well so skip the oil based options and stick with the heartier meat sauces and heavy cream or cheese sauce. It’s basically a structural element so it does VERY well in pasta bakes.
• Linguine – like fusilli, this shape (a slightly heftier, flatter version of spaghetti) holds onto sauces of all types so use it with almost anything. I think it does especially well with seafood sauces.
• Penne – these ribbed tubes have just the right nooks and crannies to keep lighter sauces on board but they aren’t really robust enough to handle the heavy meat sauces. This isn’t to say you can’t have them with a chunky sauce – but it would probably be best if it were a marinara or pomodoro as opposed to a Bolognese.

Sauces are the splendor and glory of French cooking, yet there is nothing serious
or mysterious about making them. These are indispensable to the home cook.
– Julia Child, Mastering the Art of French Cooking

I’ve been known to question whether certain foods or culinary items need the full day, week, or month set aside to commemorate them – March is, for example, Celery Month and I think we can all agree this is overkill. But March is also Sauce Month and sauce (as a concept and a culinary category not to mention the vast array of individual sauces) is not only a topic that would easily take a month to cover; it’s a topic that deserves it. A quick primer to make my point.

Continue reading “The Saucy Month of March” →

Well, here we are – mid-January and talking about fruit normally in season from May to Sept in the US, July to September in the UK. Oh and topped in ice cream. Brrrrr.

But nevertheless, here we are on Peach Melba Day.

There are so many obvious ways to start this post. “Well, isn’t that just peachy?” or “Peachy keen!” or something like that. But as I say – they are so obvious. Why not start the whole thing by mentioning that Ms. Melba (for whom Peach Melba is named) was apparently an a-class pain in the neck. Continue reading “Happy Peach Melba Day” →