| "With no outlet for my feelings, I stared at the | | | | most widely accepted and most sensible is simply |
| phone in my hand until I remembered the | | | | that the pasta is tested, to see if it's ready, by |
| spaghetti. Back in the kitchen, I turned off the gas | | | | biting into it. It should not be uncooked, nor should |
| and poured the contents of the pot into a | | | | it be soft - so there should be a slight resistance |
| colander. Thanks to the phone call, the spaghetti | | | | to the teeth - al dente in Italian. |
| was a little softer than al dente, but it had not | | | | But why should pasta be cooked al dente? |
| been dealt a mortal blow. I started eating-and | | | | There are a number of good reasons, apart from |
| thinking." The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Haruki | | | | simple tradition. Firstly, pasta nearly always |
| Murakami | | | | interacts with a sauce, and when cooked al dente |
| Haruki Murakami's narrator is typical of most | | | | it 'takes on' the sauce more efficiently. |
| non-Italians when it comes to cooking pasta. They | | | | The second reason, according to generations of |
| know that it 'should be' cooked al dente, but | | | | Italian grandmothers, is that the pasta is more |
| they're not going to lose a lot of sleep over it. Al | | | | easily digested when it's cooked al dente. There is |
| dente is, according to - amongst other - Lidia | | | | a certain amount of truth to this, although it might |
| Bastianich, the famous Italian media cook in | | | | be better to say that the pasta is better digested |
| America, one of the most difficult concepts in | | | | when cooked al dente, because in actual fact it |
| Italian cooking to get across. It is, though, one of | | | | slows the breaking down of the carbohydrates in |
| the most fundamental. | | | | the pasta into glucose - or lowers the glycemic |
| Why do we say al dente? | | | | index of the pasta. Lower glycemic indexes have |
| There are a number of theories to this, but the | | | | health benefits according to most studies. |