Pasta Shapes and Their (alternate) Uses

We’ve been selling Paolo Petrilli pasta and tomatoes for several years. Demand has always exceeded supply. UNTIL NOW. 

In October, Paolo agreed to begin direct-from-Puglia shipments of his legendary, famous-across-Italy freshly harvested tomatoes. To make things even better, these tomato shipments came to our warehouse covered in multiple layers of pasta! Pallet-upon-pallet of beautiful shapes, lovingly made in Gragnano, the holy city of dried pasta. Our first shipment of 2022 was forged from Petrilli’s final harvest of 2021 heirloom wheat. It’s fresh! And even in dried foods, freshness matters.

This may sound like an exaggeration. But life in North Carolina will never be the same.  

Tortiglione Toni.

What if ziti got twisted? Like picture this: one crazy day in Amalfi, some Campari-sipping hippies got loose in the bronze dye factory, jammed out to deep cuts of Paolo Conte, and created a wild child. Antonioni in the pasta store, circa Blow Up ‘66. Throw off those old rules, egg (pasta) head. Straight lines and 45 degree angles are for losers. Tear up your maltagliati, grandpa. It’s a tortiglione freak out, baby. A big ol’ pile of hard-to-handle curves and analog tubes coming at your brain like a character from Italo Calvino’s Le Cosmicomiche. Atoms crashing together, sauces deep and rich with Puglian chili spices, bringing Big Bang heat to the New World, topped with an absurdist sardine. Feed your head, brother. 

Festoni Freddy.

How can you not have a great time with Festoni? It’s so big! Louis Prima big.  Ebullient, irrepressible, kinda hard to understand at times: the life of the party! Your kids will love Festoni. You’ll feel like a kid eating it. It’s a noodle that reminds me of a slinky, or a jack-in-the-box, wobbling all over the place. I want to make a ridiculous neon orange cheese sauce for Festoni, possibly cheese sauce also studded with chunks of a different cheese. Discerning palates will opt for pesto, maybe dotted with just-cooked halved cherry tomatoes, delicately garnished with preserved lemon. A dish just Ligurian enough to make the hearts of pasta purists flutter. 

Rigatoni Ronny.

At the end of the day, it must be baked. A patient person will stuff each noodle with a meat mixture (I’d suggest ground pork) or cheese. Petrilli Rigatoni boils for a period of geologic time without boundaries. Chronos expanded to infinity, a point of existential emptiness where its passage can no longer be measured using our primitive timekeeping devices. Like 18 minutes. I suggest browsing a battered old cooking periodical in this purgatory. Maybe The Art of Eating, vol. 43: The Caves of Roquefort. It’s a classic analysis of the merits of the small co-ops that struggle to birth France’s greatest bleu cheese. A watched Rigatoni will never be al dente. It is stubborn, and actually a little delicate. Strikingly thick girders, made strong with heirloom Senatore Capelli wheat that grows high in the unremitting glare of a midsummer Puglian sun, too far from the Gargano’s wide, isolated massif to be given a moment’s respite in shade. Surprisingly, Rigatoni’s architectural, gracefully curved tubes will shatter into (still delicious) half-moons if vigorously stirred. Make gentle waves in the aggressively salted, faintly bubbling pasta water. Salt it to taste like the Ionian sea. Use nonna’s 19th-century Calabrian wooden spoon, the only artifact from a troubled childhood in Cosenza, to keep Rigatoni separate. Once accidentally aggregated, these clusters of drainpipe-sized pasta cannot be torn asunder. On the outer edge of al dente, maybe when their appearance is just beginning to suggest that your feeble American teeth could dare hope to pierce the ridged exterior, carefully drain Rigatoni. Bake the dang stuff in a whole jar of Paolo Petrilli brand spicy tomato sauce. Accept no imitations. *spicy sauce is sold out in NC until October 2022. Oh, for the love of Paolo, don’t forget the cheese. I like a mix of caciocavallo and fontina, or provolone. You could toss in some herbs. 

Paula Paccheri.

It’s a masterpiece. A marvel of engineering. I want a miniature polpetto inside each mezzi paccheri. I want them stacked on the plate in configurations that would set Renzo Piano’s mind a fuoco. I challenge any culinary logician (living or dead) to present a cogent argument that another extruded shape matches the dizzying heights of sensory perfection of Paccheri. One Pacchero is a perfect bite. A mouthful is an overwhelming hedonistic experience. Texture and form, weight and precision. All tomato-based sauces are improved by Paccheri’s presence. I even prefer it to Puglia’s beloved Orecchiete, a perfect shape that deserves it’s own essay. *Petrilli-brand Orecchiete unavailable in NC, because it exists only in my imagination.

Eddie Spaghetti.

It’s the gold medalist of noodles. Spaghetti’s only serious long-form rival being Abruzzese arch-nemesis (Chiara) Chitarra. Details below. Making brilliant spaghetti isn’t simple. But the shape will always seem simple to us, as it is woven into childhood. Spaghetti was first on our plates. Eventually a few (then many) other shapes wandered into the frame. Maccaroni. Rotelle. Fusilli. Farfalle. Cavatappi. Orzo (eew.) For the mature pasta lover, most of these frivolous forms are a warm memory, like celery with peanut butter and raisins, mom’s tomato soup, and velcro shoes. Not spaghetti. It endures. And grows in stature. No food is more satisfying. No pasta more easily transitions from summer to winter, from red sauce to white. No other shape is as at ease wholly unadorned. Its beauty is evident in the ability to be served simply in olive oil, with salt, as a complete meal. Breadcrumbs and parsley wouldn’t hurt. 

Chiara Chitarra.

Chitarra is pushed through a curtain of metal strings suspended above a rectangular box, a “guitar” in the eyes of Abruzzo’s pasta makers. It’s a daunting implement that to my amateur eyes looks more like a torture device than it a musical instrument. It’s a tough way to start life. Chitarra is Spaghetti’s doppelganger. Identical at first glance, but look closer and you’ll find squared-off edges, a cubist noodle that is requested by name in many of central Italy’s most famous pasta recipes. When it comes to the dining experience, I struggle to find significant difference between the two shapes. I’m sure Paolo would beg to differ, like the parent who insists their identical twin children are really quite easy to distinguish at 30 paces. Pronounce Chitarra correctly (like Chianti, with a hard C) and a hopeful diner is spontaneously elevated in status to pasta connoisseur. Maybe Chitarra’s role is to make our primal need for spaghetti easier to sate. It’s the glutinous equivalent of  an actor’s cameo in an independent film that lends credibility to their oft-reprised moneymaker role in a superhero franchise. The Noodler. A guitar-wielding, interminably soloing arch-villain. Don’t get tangled up in its slippery (with guanciale) painfully spicy (Abruzzo grows great peppers) nest. You’ll never want to leave! 

Oof.

Benny Penne.

A workmanlike pasta. Ubiquitous because it does what it does very well. Omnipresent. The AP flour of pastas. You can’t hate it. You can try different things, but denying its place in the pantheon is foolish. It will make a casserole worthy of a Wisconsin winter. Penne all’Arrabbiata is central enough to central Italian culture to have a starring alongside Marcello Mastroianni in Roma, Federico Fellini’s homage to his adopted home city. I’ve eaten Penne at harvest lunches with families of grape pickers, and been served it with a simple sauce of tomato and red pepper (cut at the table with scissors) in simple accommodations in the mountains north of Naples. It’s real. Foundational. A staple. 

Jeanie Linguine.

Ignored, misunderstood, the outsider. It’s not an essential pasta shape, until it is. Linguine is fundamental to one of the best things you can eat, the beautiful, perfect marriage of pasta with clams. Spaghetti will do, but it ain’t the same. Linguine is a specialist, an awkward ugly duckling shape that, presented in very precise circumstances (shallot, parsley, clams) becomes unsurpassably brilliant. 

I think you should buy some bags of Paolo Petrilli brand pasta. Or cases, if you run a trattoria, or are a prepper. It makes me sad to think that many Americans never encounter high-quality dried pasta. There are other good brands. Monograno from northern Italy is refined, Rustichella d’Abruzzo is decent for a mid-size producer (I love their Fregola Sarda) and Martelli in Tuscany makes a mean noodle, packed in a killer yellow bag. In my opinion, Petrilli pasta has something extra. With very little additional effort you’ll have an exceptional meal. In that context, these fancy bags of pasta that easily feed four hungry humans are quite a value. 

So many food words: I’m famished. See you at the next meal!