Take your time and learn a little about each of the types of pasta. Start with one and try different sauces and meat variations with it. Once you have become familiar with one type (this can include different thicknesses) then move on and try another. There is so much variety in pasta that if served with different types of sauces or used in salads, soups or even puddings, you can enjoy it several times a week without making the same dish twice. Pasta can be used for breakfast casseroles, luncheon salads and dinner entrees and even for dessert. Try your hand, experiment and see what you can come up with.
Vinegar is a good meat tenderizer and this is why you'll find it in lot of grilled marinades. A Chicken Salad Recipe classic one to start you off is a mix of vinegar and oil. Just rub it onto your favorite steaks a couple of hours before you hit the grill and enjoy a beautifully tender result.Some of the hollow or tubular pastas are elbow macaroni (most often used for macaroni and cheese or macaroni salad. Elbow macaroni usually comes in two sizes. The large size is great for casseroles and the smaller sizes are good used in soup such as minestrone or vegetable. Large width tubular pastas are ziti which again comes in several sizes, penne, rigatoni and cannelloni. Cannelloni are usually about 3 inches long and are served stuffed with a cheese or meat filling and topped with a marinara or meat sauce.
The best quality pasta is made from semolina (hard durum wheat) and eggs with maybe recipes cookie a little salt and some olive oil thrown in. There are all manner of pasta and range in price from one dollar a pound on up to $10 a pound or more for hand-made pasta. Before we go too crazy here and make your mind spin with all the pastas available, let's just get down to basics and explain the differences between the most commonly used pastas, how they are normally used and the types of sauces that go well with them.
We will start out with the flat pastas which include lasagna, linguini, fettuccini and papparadelle. Dried Lasagna noodles are usually about 2-3" wide and can be purchased in boxes either uncooked or precooked. Domestic lasagna noodles are longer than the imported ones; however most of the imported ones are of a better quality. You can usually also purchase fresh pasta which can be used for lasagna from your local Italian deli. Lasagna may either be served simply with a Bolognese (meat) sauce with shredded parmesan or more traditionally as a layered casserole. The sauce for lasagna can vary from marinara (tomato) to Bolognese, mushroom, vegetarian or seafood. There will usually be a layer of pasta, a layer of ricotta cheese, a layer of sauce and a layer of mozzarella. Sometimes the pasta pictures of birthday cakes and cheese is layered without the sauce and the sauce is added at serving time.
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