LOL! Dcarch, it's never risen to hatred for me, but I agree about farfalle. Even as a child, I didn't like them. And I agree that cavatappi take more shaking, but I really like them. :) My other dislike is wee pasta when not in soup (and not my fave in soup either), and that includes the rings (think Spaghetti-Os in multiple sizes) we used to get in sopas secos in Mexico, as well as tiny stars and tiny alphabets. One size bigger is fine, but I don't like too small to bite. But couscous is so very small it's something else and doesn't bother me. :)

Bucatini - holds sauce well, and offers a good chew.

I am firmly in the camp of No Favorite Pasta..... whatever works with what I'm making.

Lars, a friend's neighbor made a vermicelli salad that was delicious. It was the first time I ever had a pasta salad not made with shells or macaroni.

I love farfalle! It was always a treat for us when I was little. I suppose my go-to is penne, but occasionally I change it up with fusilli or spiralli. DH doesn’t like short cut pastas much, so we usually have spaghetti or linguine if we’re both eating- but he doesn’t twirl pasta, he (annoyingly) cuts it all up into little short pieces! Why he won’t just eat short cut pasta that’s already in small pieces for the non twirlers is beyond me 🙄

On the rare occasions my MIL served pasta (FIL was not fond of pasta), it was bucatini, which I don’t care for. It’s a pain to slurp up that last bit due to the hole down the middle.

Lars, that does sound good, and I agree about mayo in pasta salad. The one I liked, I had some years ago at a plant swap, and it was more like the one you described.

Cindy - I do have one of those gloves that came with my Mandoline but it is still in the package after several years.

I am totally not convinced to spend more money for pastas made from brass dies. I don't believe brass/bronze dies create rough texture on pastas to hold more sauce. I think a bigger spoon holds a lot more sauce.

Brass/bronze dies cost less money to make. Stainless steel is a very difficult metal to machine.

dcarch

Some new shapes here, for me. Coincidentally I had cavatelli for I believe the first time last week; I enjoyed it very much.

A year ago I would have said tri color rotini as it’s used in a family favorite quick meal that I’d cook up far too often. But my daughter’s post-covid taste buds no longer like it, so that’s been replaced with spaghetti. I always have orzo on hand, for avgolemono.

I bough this new shape, cascatelli, a while ago but haven’t tried it yet:

From the box:

From the mind of James Beard Award winner Dan Pashman, creator and host of The Sporkful food podcast, comes CASCATELLI (Italian "waterfalls"). Three years in the making, this totally new shape was created in collaboration with the artisans at Sfoglini. Cascatelli is designed to maximize the three qualities by which Dan believes all pasta shapes should be judged:

• Sauceability: How readily sauce adheres to the shape

• Forkability: How easy it is to get the shape on your fork and keep it there

• Toothsinkability: How satisfying it is to sink your teeth into it

I like all pasta, covered with whatever, love all of them. Once I found a bag of pasta in the shapes of snowmen and snowflakes. They didn't taste all that great but floating in a bowl of soup just made me laugh out loud so those have to be my all time favorites.

We’ve been eating a lot of pasta lately with tomato-based sauces. So I’m kind of tired of it, and am leaning towards peppardelle because it can go under so many other dishes, meats, with a nice sauce.

I make fresh pappardelle frequently, partly because it is one of the easiest to make by hand, but I do also like it. I bought it dried once, but I prefer it fresh.

Cindy, I have not tried Veganaise. I like regular mayonnaise - just not with pasta.

When I make a chiffonade of basil, I stack a bunch of basil leaves and roll them into a cigar shape. Then I slice this shape thinly to make thin ribbons of basil that cling very well to the rotini. It makes a difference in the way it tastes - at least to me. If it is just plainly chopped, it chews differently. When putting basil on pizza, I tear the leaves instead of chop them because I was large pieces.

I think I would also like olives and sweet red bell pepper in the rotini salad that I make.

Lars - If you decide to try it (Vegenaise) I recommend the grape seed oil version. The original version has an aftertaste. Also, I recently saw that they have come out with an avocado version but I have yet to see it in the stores here.

Recipe determines shape. Ditalini in Pasta e Fagioli, Bucatini in all'Amatriciana, Penne or Casarecce with a vodka sauce, Orecchiette with a sausage/rosemary sauce, etc.

I really do NOT like pasta. I'm the odd person out who rarely if ever makes spaghetti. I think *maybe* once a year I'll make it? There is a macaroni dish my mother always made us. I believe it originated in Germany as her mother was German and she handed down the recipe. You cook your macaroni and strain and cover with milk then add some custard powder to it to thicken. Add butter and sugar and serve. You can also add cinnamon if you like. I'll make it with either regular macaroni, wagon wheels pasta or mini shells. I prefer the shells and it holds the custard better. So: to answer your question.... small shells.

Dcarch, see if you can try some smooth pasta of the same shape and quality next to some brass die pasta, and see what you think. That same quality bit might be hard to do, however. The price difference isn't for the dies themselves, but that they're usually used in small batch, artisan made, high quality pasta, and a lot of the "factory style" pasta isn't the same quality. The brass dies require a lot more attention than the stainless ones as well, so there's a certain amount of extra labor that justifies the price difference, though the actual price is what the market will bear.

Re 'holds more sauce", this phrase is misleading. It's not about a quantity that can be held in a spoon. For that, vertical ridges like FOAS's waterfalls, radiatore, cups like shells, etc., are the choice. For elbows, spaghetti or other simple extruded pasta, the roughness helps the sauce to stick, and the flavor, rather than sliding into needing a spoon. It's a subtle but tangible difference. It makes the paste good when stabbed by a fork, not spoon necessary, and none of the much discussed American tendency to use way too much sauce, rather than just enough to coat the pasta.

"Recipe determines shape."

i completey agree and have many favorites depending on what I'm making.

Since amylou asked if we could only pick one, I'd have to say penne.

I rarely eat pasta now, and so I don't have a true favorite. I tend to buy the vegetable pastas, most often rotini; I also keep linguine on hand.

My most often pasta dish is a quick preparation of whatever kind I have, tossed with a 50/50 mix of butter and olive oil, then tossed with parsley, garlic, and parmesan.

FAOS i have had that pasta one time and really loved eating it. Of course I could never find it again alas....

Farfalle

"From the mind of James Beard Award winner Dan Pashman, creator and host of The Sporkful food podcast, comes CASCATELLI (Italian "waterfalls"). Three years in the making,..."

It cooks up overboard thick. I did not care for it and i'm not alone. I've suggested to cook up a small handful in a small saucepan until firm aldente and add to brothy winter soups just before or five minutes before serving like a dumpling-ish. (rather than tossing or giving away).

I did listen to the entire podcast a few months ago. Worth a listen as well as the bucatini article about the supply chain and BigPasta. Pashman really wanted a long noodle and just could not make that happen.

The ruffled edges remind me of the thick American lasagna noodles with the ruffles. Never cared for that one. I prefer flat and thin.

"FAOS i have had that pasta one time and really loved eating it. Of course I could never find it again alas...."

You may have had something similar. It has been backordered for eons since the podcast. It may have made it to WholeFoods but that would be recently and in short supply. I could be wrong. The NY state supplier is a small producer and has not been able to keep up production. Pashman has partnered/sold the shape to TraderJoes with stipulations. Seems it will be made in Italy. No details retained as i don't care for it.

Some other shapes from Sfoglini...

Penne, but I'm not happy about it. But I could use it for sauce, in a salad, and in a soup. And noodle pudding in a pinch. Second choice rotini, for the same reason.

no. i like switching it up ... home made is best, but i shop shapes, depending on the intended dish.

Not sure, but I don't bother buying spaghetti shaped, as I've never been able to twirl it on a fork. I can handle chopsticks with ease, but keep me away from spaghetti pasta!!!

OK, plllog, lets take a look at a "scientific" study, comparing bronze die cut pasta vs, normal Teflon die cut pasta. This is what I see:

1. He has a bigger pile of bronze die pasta, more pasta surface for the sauce to stick on.
2. There are only few drops of pasta sauce on the Teflon die plate, if you average those drops out for each Gemelli pasta, there is no possible way that your tongue can tell the difference.

For me It boils down to this: “These days, when bronze dies are used, artisans are often using higher quality durum semolina that will offer a toothsome bite, a lovely wheat flavor, and an all around better, tastier end product.” Which has nothing to do with the fact that the pasta came out from a bronze die.

Just MHO

dcarch

"Just MHO

dcarch.."

BS, big time. So surpirised you see it that way. 🙄

pink: share that noodle pudding recipe if you would

Great video, Dcarch! That's the kind of test I was talking about (though I think he did it wrong (see below), comparing slick to furred as like to like as possible. I think the "more" on the one side is an artifact of him spooning it all higher. He doesn't seem like a cheat, so my guess is that he made the same amount of pasta for each. Though if the slick side is more spread out, that could cause more seepage. OTOH, it looks like most of what came through the screen is water, or maybe oil. There are a couple of red spots that look like chunks that maybe fell while he was moving things around, but too big for the screen.

But even though he did sames, the sauce wasn't a fair comparison, being so thin with lumps, and the screen itself is should be too fine for a good red sauce. Red sauce shouldn't have either oil or water shed out of it. The gemelli was a bad choice for the demo because it has a lot of crevices to catch sauce anyway.

Haven't you ever had diner pasta? The spaghetti or macaroni comes out of a bed of sauce on your fork and is naked. It's smooth, and pale. That doesn't happen with better pasta of the same shape.

Agreed on the ingredients, however. And this is a good argument for if you have an appropriate shape with nice crevices to your pasta, which matches well with your sauce, it doesn't matter much whether it's slick or not.

plllog, I have a Pasta Fresca automatic extrusion pasta maker. Sometime ago I went into my machine workshop, using the same drill bits and made two pasta dies for the machine, one bronze and one Teflon. I used the same flour dough mix, and made pasta using each die. After air drying and examined under a magnifying glass, I did not see much surface texture difference between the two pastas.

Al thought I did not perform the same experiment using different dough mixtures, I would assume the textures would be very different even extruded thru the same die.

Moral of the story, Quality of the dough makes the pasta to die for. :-)

dcarch

Fusilli or rotini (are they not the same? I am a pasta peasant). We don't do pasta often, but when we do it's comfort food and those work for our favorites....alfredo, goulash, mac and cheese, spaghetti sauce, Cincinnati chili, pasta salad. DH may disagree and vote for big ol' fat homemade noodles though.

Sauce determines which pasta I use. I like angel hair, but prefer thin sauces. I tried cascatelli with a bolognese sauce; that noodle is good for that thick sort of sauce.

Dcarch, I know nothing about die making. The closest I've come is cutting plywood patterns on a bandsaw. :) The point of the brass dies commonly referenced is that they're rough, where the factory dies (stainless?) are very smooth and make smooth pasta. If you made your teflon one by hand with the same hand tools as your brass one, I'm not surprised that they made the same texture. Surely the ones in the factories are cast in molds and smoothed?

I can see the surface texture on the artisan pasta I buy, and the smoothness of the boxed whatever that goes in mac and cheese, with naked eyes. No magnifying glass necessary.

plllog, re-reading my posts, I realized I made a mistake. I forgot to mention that most of the pasta you buy, whether the maker says it or not, are most likely made from bronze dies.

Dies need to be made from non-rust material, such as bronze and stainless steel. There are many ways to machine metal, drilling, extruding, laser cutting, high pressure water cutting, electrostatic machining, casting etc. but bronze is used more than stainless steel because it is much easier to work with, especially for intricate pasta shapes. To make production easier, bronze dies extrusion orifices are lined with Teflon. So when you read the labels and it say bronze die cut, they would not be lying. But that is not the same as pastas made from bronze dies without Teflon. I am not sure most food writers realize that.

I agree that many "bronze die cut" pastas are visually different. As I had indicated, the recipes for many are different for slower extrusion thru dies without Teflon lining. Coarser grains? More water?

Taste matters. Mouth feel matters for pasta. don't give up on pasta s that don't say bronze cut on the box.

dcarch

This thread has really supplied some very interesting reading! I very seldom cook pasta, so have never heard of most of those discussed here. But I do like to learn, so while shopping yesterday I made a trip down the pasta aisle. What a surprise! The shelves were mostly empty! As near as I could tell, though, they mostly stock the more common shapes. There were, however, a generous amount of bags of alphabets, stars, and other very tiny shapes available. Wish that had been the case when my boys were little.

If I had to chose just one shape, it would probably be very thin spaghetti. Because I can't imagine other pasta dishes I make using anything other than their specific 'shape', I probably just wouldn't make them. But I do make spaghetti once in awhile. Cooking for just myself is very different than cooking for a house full of growing boys! Or even just for myself and a hard working husband.

Rusty

Just coming back to report on the cascatelli. I cooked up half a pound, doctored up a good 16 ounces of Rao’s sauce and added four links worth of sausage meat, unabashedly mixed them together in an American oversauced style, and served. I know sleevendog wasn’t impressed but I thought they met the three goals in spades: Easy to eat, solid bite without being dense, held all the sauce. I’m going to go back to where I bought it and see if they have any more, but I doubt it.

give me longs anyday... linguine, angel hair, thins...

FOAS,

Looks like you found your dentures. LOL.

Sorry. Just kidding. A very delicious pasta dish!

Anthony! It's Wednesday! Come to FOAS' house!

dcarch

That’s funny! Perhaps more like an invisalign. I’ll never look at it the same! Went back to the shop and they had plenty so I bought four boxes. Turns out the owner is good friends with the inventor so they get stock regularly.

FOAS, looks like cascatelli is only available from the inventor.

https://youtu.be/lTskUfIihXU

Pashman has partnered/sold the shape to TraderJoes with stipulations. Seems it will be made in Italy. No details retained as i don't care for it.

That would be great!

I'm glad you like it FOAS!. It not only put the NY pasta makers on the map, Sfoglini

---they increased sales last year by 30% on their own pastas, but have ordered a couple new extruders and drying racks to increase production. They have been selling it at WholeFoods and clearly locally in his neighborhood shops. (Pashman)

His contracts require the bronze dies be made by the same fella in StatenIsland to control quality. So the TraderJoes product should be very similar.

Pashman wanted a long pasta but could not make it work. The short version was a compromize he was not all that happy with but just went with it. It helps to have a pod-cast social media story to hype it. It is a great story. I listened to all 8 podcasts this time last year. About 10 hours.

His 'side-kick' in the process is really knowlegable in all things 'pasta shape'. So much i did not know. As i mentioned before, it is worth a listen.

Pashman does not care about organic so that keeps the price down.

It does hold sauce very well. As does this short one i like. The pic above....

Looks like they may carry it at Fresh Market. I see they also have those Chili Lemon Pistachios I used to buy at Trader Joe's.

On my way to meet clients in Wall Street area, I pass by a pasta restaurant, Maestro Pasta Lab on John Street many times. They have a big fancy pasta machine right behind the store front window. I never paid attention to this establishment because I was always in a hurry to a few meetings. I will be in that area again this coming week. I will check them out.

Their WEB site looks very interesting and delicious.

dcarch

Sorry for the long hiatus in getting back to this post. After some initial research, I may have been mistaken calling the one kind of pasta I find most versatile "rotini" because apparently that's not Italian, and the correct nomenclature is "fusilli." Anyway, what I am talking about is the loose spiral pasta, not the tighter version. That would not be very good for a noodle pudding.

FOAS, that post on cascatelli was very interesting. I have not seen it around, but I could special order some I suppose. A dish I like but rarely make is "skillet lasagna" which you can make many ways. I like to make it with pasta in the shape of small wavy lasagna strips. I used to think that was called "tagliatelli" but now I see that tagliatelli does not have the wavy sides, and that it is called maybe "mafalda." I eat past a LOT and enjoy pairing shapes with sauces and themes.

So here's my noodle pudding recipe, which I know as "lokshen kugel" although when my grandmother made that, she just mixed a little cinnamon sugar with some of her little home made egg noodles and cottage cheese. One could use fusilli or other pasta but it wouldn't be quite the same. I usually use med. egg noodles. Not the most wide or the thinnest, I go for middle of the road. I like the pudding with raisins but Dad doesn't so I usually add a small can of crushed pineapple if I want to snazz it up. It seems overly creamy but it sets up over time. In fact, you often have to add more milk to reheat the leftovers.

Creamy Noodle Pudding

8 ounces medium egg noodles

3 eggs, well beaten

1/3 cup sugar, heaping if you like sweeter pudding

1/2 lb. cottage cheese

salt to taste

3 oz cream cheese (can use neufchatel)

i pint sour cream

1 tsp. vanilla

1 cup milk

Combine all ingredients except noodles in a large bowl. Parboil the noodles and add to the mixture. Butter a baking dish and put the mixture in (I think I use an 11.x 13 pyrex one)

Bake at 350 for i hour. I top with a dusting of cinnamon sugar. Let sit at least 10 min. before serving. Serves 8-10.

^eggs, sugar, cream, sour cream, cream cheese🤪...🤢and then cinnamon sugar, 😬, yuck.

Nice video from Eater this week. The making of pasta.

bronze die pasta...

More for me, great SD!

sleevendog (5a NY 6aNYC NL CA)

^eggs, sugar, cream, sour cream, cream cheese🤪...🤢and then cinnamon sugar, 😬, yuck.

WOW!

I adore pasta of all shapes and sizes with the exception of angel hair and vermicelli. I like a little bite. Usually choose linguini and or ziti.

Nice, Judi. I think I pay $5 or $6 for mine.

Rotini in Italian would be small burps.