The rules and recipes for no-fail pasta – whatever the shape and size

A few years ago, while trying to establish the best day for a return trip to a pasta factory, I was asked, “What shape would you like to see being made?” Fusilli was my quick reply. A few weeks later, and wearing disposable coveralls and an elasticated gauze hat, I watched a mass of dough being forced through a bronze plate perforated with holes, and spirals of pasta twisting out from the other side before being cut into one-inch lengths. It was an experience every bit as psychedelic as I’d hoped it would be.

Evolving from the Greek word for paste, the word pasta signifies a vast number of preparations – pastry and doughs – made from flour and liquid, but is most closely associated with the (dried) preparation that fills so many of our kitchen cupboards. While it can be made from other flours (rice or legumes, say), dried pasta is predominantly made from a hard durum wheat and water dough that is forced through holes to make shapes that are then dried. How this is done, and the final result, varies dramatically from pasta maker to pasta maker, and I was reminded of this variation when I tasted many brands of supermarket spaghetti for the Food Filter column in Feast this coming weekend. That tasting also left me heartened and surprised by the quality within a fairly broad price range.

It pays to look at the packet, too, to note the ingredients, to discover if it was passed through a bronze die, which increases the porousness and roughness of the pasta’s surface, and thus its ability to retain the sauce, and to check for the drying time (careful drying is key). All that said, some packets with less information on them turned out to be surprisingly good.

What really matters, though, is how you cook the pasta. As a starting point, I suggest one litre of heavily boiling water plus 5-10g of salt for every 100g of pasta, and set the timer to go off a minute before the recommended time, so you can taste the pasta and get it out in good time to suit your own preferences.

I look for four things in a pasta. Its ability to hold up during the cooking: good pasta is muscular and maintains structure while it’s cooking, which also helps it maintain flavour and digestibility, which are the second and third things I look for. If the pasta is not muscular, there is a good chance it will be flabby one minute and pudding the next, which adversely affects flavour, digestibility and – the fourth thing I am looking for – its ability to hold sauce. Which sauce? Good question, and a reason to go through the archives.

First up, strings of spaghetti. Let Giorgio Locatelli be your guide here, with four essential, classic and extremely useful recipes: aglio, olio e peperoncino (garlic, oil and chilli); carbonara (guanciale, pecorino, egg); tuna, tomato and olives; and cacio e pepe (cheese and pepper). Also suitable for spaghetti, and one of my all-time favourite pasta dishes, is an umami-rich sauce of extra-virgin olive oil, tomato and preserved anchovy fillets, while another option is Meera Sodha’s vegan golden garlic and lemon spaghetti.

Linguine, meanwhile, means “little tongues” and looks like slightly flattened spaghetti, and it pairs well with courgettes cut into a similarly sized strips, beaten egg and grated parmesan for a “carbonara-style” dish. It is also, incidentally, a great way to get into the habit of treating the starchy pasta cooking water as an ingredient in itself that helps emulsify and bring together a dish. Another harmonious condiment for linguine is basil pesto, and Felicity Cloake and Nigel Slater have great recipes.

Staying with Nigel, but turning our attention to dried fettuccine, which takes its name from fette (slices) but looks like ribbons, his pairing of it with mussels and dill (pictured top) is great. Fettuccine, which has almost identical proportions to tagliatelle, also pairs well with meat sauce, a trusty recipe for which is Marcella Hazan’s bolognese ragù from her book The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, and welcomes butter and cheese.

Moving on from ribbons to quills, penne is obliquitous and surprisingly hard to cook well so it has that pleasing al dente firmness but doesn’t feel like a choking hazard. I am especially attentive when I boil it, setting the timer for a full two minutes less than the recommended cooking time and tasting before I drain – remember, the pasta will keep cooking while it’s mixed with the sauce. In Rome, it is served all’arrabbiata, which translates as “angry-fiery” thanks to the generous amount of red chilli in the rich tomato sauce. Rukmini Iyer, meanwhile, suggests a budget dish pairing penne with tomato, chickpeas and rosemary, while the wonderful Joe Trivelli cooks it like it’s 1983, in penne al vodka.

Next to spirals of fusilli, arguably the most accommodating shape of them all, because it catches just about any sauce or condiment you give it. There are literally hundreds of pasta sauces from the archives that I could go for here, but I’ll limit myself to just three: a soft sauce of leek, potato, parmesan and hazelnuts; one with spinach, pine nuts and shavings of parmesan for Tom Jackson’s pasta salad; and Meera Sodha’s vegan sauce of miso butter and greens.

Which brings us to rigatoni, those inch-long tubes that take their name from their ridges. Rigatoni are double-catchers, on those ridges and in the mouths of the tubes, and Romans are especially keen on them for the four classic pastas, carbonara, cacio e pepe, amatriciana and gricia. Alternatively, what about Ixta Belfrage’s idea of mixing rigatoni with a cream (pesto) of rocket and nuts? Also ridged tubes, but shorter – in fact, the name means “half-sleeves” – mezze maniche are also suitable for those classic Roman sauces, and work beautifully in a summer veg pasta featuring chunks of aubergine, red pepper and mozzarella, and lots of basil.

Finally, from tubes to ears: orecchiette is another accommodating and easy-going shape that catches most sauces. Traditional pairings, however, often involve members of the broccoli family, so how about Angela Hartnett’s recipe with chilli and sprouting broccoli? As for all of those ends of packets, mix them up for pasta mista (mixed pasta) and add to soups and minestrone.

Service with a smile | On the recommendation of a Roman chef called Alessandro Venturi, I once made a two-hour detour and missed a train to go to Anna Hedworth’s restaurant, Cook House in Newcastle. Service, her second book, is another selection of recipes featuring Anna’s imaginative and achievable flavour combinations, but it is also a charming document of a typical day in her award-winning restaurant, starting with morning deliveries and ending with the last pudding served and Anna locking the front door.

Taste test | Adapted from Rosella Postorino’s novel At the Wolf’s Table, the film Le Assaggiatrici (The Tasters) tells the story of a group of young women whose task it is to test Adolf Hitler’s meals to ensure they are not poisoned. Much of the detailed film, directed by Silvio Soldini, takes place at the table – a calm, civilised and utterly terrifying space controlled by the SS and overseen by a cook who shares dishes and the Führer’s preferences: “He goes crazy for chocolate.”

A twist in the tail | Having mislaid my previous one a few months ago, I recently bought myself a new mestolo per spaghetti, or spaghetti spoon. This long-handled implement with fork-like prongs is an unbeatable tool for lifting spaghetti (and other long pasta shapes) out of boiling salted water and into a pan of sauce. It is just as useful for serving spaghetti, being designed to enable a good lift and to help twist the pasta into a neat, satisfying pile on to the plate or bowl. Mine’s from a shop in Rome, but in the UK John Lewis has a good and affordable one.