An A to Z of Pasta: Rachel Roddy

Rachel is one of the most highly recognised food writers in Italy. She has lived in Rome for 20 years learning about, cooking and eating pasta. Her book, An A to Z of Pasta tells stories of pasta shapes and the best sauces to pair with them. If you don’t already have a copy, you really should.

 

Pasta is ingrained in Italian culture. What do you think the first pasta shape was? And where did it originate from?
In the words of Corrado Barberis, the origin of pasta is multitudinous, it isn’t Italian, or Greek, or Arab, or Jewish, but all of them, with the metamorphosis in Italy, which provided the necessary conditions. The physical evolution of pasta, though, can be looked at simply. Wheat was milled into flour and mixed with liquid to make a big lump, a gnocco, from which came parents greek lagana and arab tria, who between them gave birth to hundreds of children.

It is so true that different sauces really do work better with different shapes of pasta. Do you think this is largely to do with the way they hold the sauce?
On this I take my lead from the great Oretta Zanini de Vita, scholar and author of the astonishing Encyclopedia of Pasta and wise home cook, and her theory that “any sauce goes pretty well with any shape and anyone who says otherwise is probably overthinking.”
And yet… there are a few things to remember when matching shapes and sauces, while bearing in mind that for every suggestion the opposite will also be true.
The first isn’t about matching at all, but the texture and surface of the pasta. Better-quality pasta means better- quality texture, that is rough and porous, which catches sauce.

Form leads to flavor. Pasta shapes are all made of flour and liquid, the hundreds of shapes practically the same in substance, but the different forms have a hugely different feel (and this is different from their geometry) and you could argue flavor.
Geometry plays a part. Tiny shapes are better suspended than swamped, so are good for soup or broth, which means a spoon, unless the result is so dense you return to a fork (orzo—I’m talking to you). Shells and tubes are Venus flytraps waiting to catch or hide things: beans, batons of guanciale or small florets of cauliflower. Dragged and caved-in shapes, for example ears of orecchiette and indented cavatelli, are also waiting to catch vegetables or vegetable ragù. And so it goes on.
But there is one single most important factor in matching a shape and sauces: you and what you like.

What made you move to Italy?
20 years ago I decided to travel for an uncertain amount of time, which took me to Rome for a while and I never left. more than wanting to live in italy, I wanted to write.

Where is your favourite place to eat pasta in Rome?
Piatto Romano in Testaccio

Butter or Olive Oil?
Both, sometimes together.

 

Photo Credit: Elena Hetherwick for the Guardian