1. No seasoning the water!

This is a big one. Pasta doesn’t absorb flavour, it adsorbs, meaning the sauce and flavour sticks to the outside of the noodle, it doesn’t sink into the dough. Pasta dough will only take in water, not salt. Even if it did, you use shitty cooking salt for the pasta water, why would you want any flavour from that when we could season our pasta sauce, and hence the pasta dough, with beautiful seasonings like parmigiano reggiano, pancetta, anchovies, soy, or at the very least, Murray River pink salt? You’d never season a steak with your table salt, so why would you season your pasta that’s going in a beautiful ragu with it? Also, there’s no need to add olive oil to your pasta water, it won’t make any difference to the flavour or it sticking together. 

2. Don’t tip out your pasta water 

Use either a spider sieve or tongs for long pasta to pull the noodles directly from the water into the sauce. The reason being is because we use a little bit of that water to help emulsify that sauce, if you were to tip it all out, you’d be losing all that magic. This is another reason we don’t season the water at Fabbrica or Ragazzi, you’re adding essentially sea water in your sauce, which should be perfectly seasoned in the first place.

3. More butter more better

Pretty much always finish and/or start your pasta sauce with butter. For a ravioli sauce, the butter should be nice and hot and foamy before you add your ravs with a good spoon of pasta water. If you’re doing a tossed ragu, then you should add it at the end. Take the sauce and pasta off the heat, toss through the butter. The cold butter will melt, cooling down the pasta and bringing it all together. In trouble? Add more pasta water. We use Meander Valley Dairy butter from Tassie at Ragazzi and Fabbrica.

4. Lemon juice doesn’t go with everything

Don’t automatically finish all pasta with lemon juice. There’s no depth of flavour in lemon, it’s a bit one-dimensional. Sometimes it’s great, but you can really judge a chef’s pantry on their range of vinegars, there are so many wonderful options out there. People spend so much money on salts and olive oils and soys, but I would spend money on good vinegar. We use different vinegars to finish different pastas at Ragazzi, some dishes take a sweeter aged cava vinegar, such as a cacio e pepe for example, while sherry vinegar is better for ragu, especially goat or lamb ragus which have more robust flavours. Bonito vinegar for crab and other such seafood pastas. We tend to use a muscatel vinegar every now and then too for more delicate options. Aged vinegars have so much more depth than lemon.

5. Use rice flour to dust your handmade pasta

I picked this tip up from Chinese wonton skin making. The Chinese know a bit about noodles! Rice flour doesn’t dry out the pasta, but keeps it dry enough so it doesn’t stick. It’s finer and softer than wheat flour. We also use a dusting of semolina in the mix for hand-cut noodles such as tagliatelle, pappardelle, chittara, and semolina-based doughs such as cavatelli or orecchiette. 

6. Embrace Korean and Japanese Flavours

Particularly soys and fish sauces, which we use a lot of at Ragazzi and Fabbrica. The Romans used garum which is an ancient fish sauce, so it makes a lot of sense, especially if you’re using a tomato-based ragu or sauce, it’s just extra umami. When cooking anything that appreciates anchovies, like goat, lamb or duck ragus, I like to use fish-based seasonings in those to add more depth of flavour. We use a lot of Korean tuna soy and a bit of Japanese white soy too which is quite nice as it has a bit of sweetness from the wheat it’s made from. 

7. Use Fresh Pasta To Save Time

Cooking with fresh pasta (we sell it wholesale and retail at Fabbrica) is so much faster! Once you get your water to boil it’s just three minutes to done, as opposed to waiting 10-11 minutes for dried pasta to cook. Oh and remember, pasta always needs a minute in the sauce to continue cooking, so take that into account when you’re boiling it. 

Find fresh pasta by the gram and all the vinegars, soys and flours you need to make excellent pasta at Fabbrica Pasta Shop. Or, experience the magic cooked for you down the road at Ragazzi.