Back in 2013, Martha Stewart Living magazine featured a recipe (more of a technique, really; the ingredient combinations are infinitely variable) for a One-Pot Pasta dish which readers gave three stars out of five. Sounds like a great idea – so why wasn’t it a runaway hit?
Pasta Al Pomerola: Made the right way, by Cesare Cassella’s technique.
You can throw this dish together in a single high-sided Sauté pan or a dutch oven, in the time it takes to chop the ingredients and measure out the cooking water. Martha says it takes only 10 minutes or so to cook, until the Pasta reaches the magical, beloved àl denté stage. Just divide the contents of the pot into four bowls and garnish with Freshly Grated Parmesan and Basil, and dig in.
So why isn’t everyone making their weeknight pasta this way, now, saving dishes and time, and feeding the whole crew a healthy balanced meal at a reasonable cost?
Some drawbacks…
Yes, well… There are some drawbacks to the One-Pot Pasta method that become apparent even before you start to prepare it:
First, you’re coking all the ingredients in the usual amount of cooling water you’d use for the amount of Pasta called for. The ingredients will savoury ingredients will yield their flavours to the Water which, in turn, passes them on to the Pasta to absorb. That makes lovely Pasta, but you end up with rather dull-tasting veggies that all taste sort of alike at some level.
Cooking everything in water also leaves you with something more like a Soup Broth and less like what I think of when I think, ‘Pasta Sauce’. I was taught, by Signora Indovina, that the Pasta is there as a backdrop for the Sauce, which is supposed to be the flavour star of a simple Pasta dish. A Soup Broth really doesn’t do it for me in this application.
Delecate ingredients such as the fresh Tomatoes will very quickly become cooked to a mush if boiled at Pasta temperatures, reducing their appeal both visually and flavour-wise.
Ingredients like Garlic and Onions will probably be under-cooked and won’t have a chance to contribute the full glory of their flavours to the dish.
A possible cure for the ills…
I found a similar recipe for one-pot Pasta that the blogger said had been recommended by a real Italian Chef. She said that, when she heard about it, she rushed right out and bought the ingredients, and tried it. She also said she was very disappointed by the results. The pasta was too soft on the outside and tough on the inside. And the flavour was diluted by repeated additions of water to replace liquid from the Sauce which had evaporated.
So… I tracked down the Chef whose recipe she was trying to emulate, Cesare Casella, and discovered some interesting things:
The blogger was boiling the Pasta and Sauce mixture when she should have been simmering it slowly, covered in a deep sauce pan or dutch oven.
It’s critical to add the ingredients to the pot in the right order at the right time for this One-Pot meal to be a success.
And don’t add more Water than his recipe specifies.
I found his recipe, in all its glorious detail, on Casella’s Facebook page.
Got me wondering about ‘Risotto Style’…
“Can You Really Cook Pasta in Tomato Sauce? YES, CERTO!” Insists Casella. “But not the way that this person [the blogger] tried to do it. […] This is the #truetuscan way. I call it pasta, #risotto style. I hope you will try it and for sure you can let me know if you have any questions.”
I’ll bet other Pasta dishes can be prepared Risotto style with the same great results. Now, maybe, the one-pot approach, using the ‘al Rissotto’ technique will become a runaway hit!
And I’ll bet that, with a few minor adjustments, the technique can be adapted to suit Instant Pot technology, to further compress the cooking time and better preserve the nuances of the flavour.
Let me work on it. I’ll get back to you!
~ Maggie J.