Don't Sweat the Aubergine

helpful, but they cannot be precise: kitchen conditions and water qualities vary too much. Appearance is a good guide: pasta turns milky white when it is ready. But it’s best to remove a piece with a slotted spoon, stick it under the cold tap for a second, and bite into it. Stop cooking when the pasta has passed the crunchy stage but still has some firmness in the centre. Its residual heat will carry on cooking it for a while after it is drained.
    You might think that you’d prefer your pasta to be soft; but if you aim to get it that way, you’ll find it has a soggy starchiness that is hard to digest.
    6 • Sauce it quickly . A cooling mound of drained pasta in a colander or bowl will stick together. Lubricate it by stirring in your sauce, or some butter or oil, as quickly as possible. When you drain the pasta, put the pot underneath the colander before all the water has drained through, in order to catch a little of it. You can use this cooking liquid if the pasta, once dressed with sauce, seems a little dry.
Pasta shapes
    The ones I use most often are spaghetti, penne (the quills: I usually get the ridged –
rigati
– ones) and conchiglie (shells). Spaghetti goes well with meat and tomato sauces, as everyone who has been through the cookery rite-of-passage of making a spag bol knows, but not so well with creamy ones, in which it is more likely to stick together. Penne and conchiglie go with anything. I’ve slightly gone off farfalle (butterflies) and fusilli (spirals), parts of which overcook while others remain hard. I buy macaroni for macaroni cheese, that insult to Italian gastronomy ( see here ).
Pasta sauces
    Tomato sauce: see here . The quantities I’ve given are inauthentic, I’m afraid: Italians use just enough sauce to provide a coating and flavouring. But then the way we usually eat pasta, as a substantial main course rather than as a
primo piatto
(first course), is inauthentic too.
    Other vegetable sauces: for ideas about dressing pasta with vegetables, see the Vegetables chapter ( here ), and in particular asparagus ( see here ), aubergines ( see here ), broccoli ( see here ), cauliflower ( see here ), courgettes ( see here ), mushrooms ( see here ), peppers ( see here ) and spinach ( see here ). Some of these vegetables – the non-green ones, and courgettes – might be combined with a tomato sauce.
    Bolognese sauce: see here .
CARBONARA SAUCE
    One of my favourite things. In spite of the advice of Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers (in the first
River Café Cook Book
) that this sauce goes best with penne or a similar shape, and in spite of what I myself say (above) about spaghetti and creamy (eggy, in this case) sauces, I still like this with spaghetti. The egg seems to scramble more satisfactorily, for some reason; with penne, I often end up with pasta in a runny, eggy and somewhat unappetizing liquid.
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HOW TO MAKE IT
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    For 2
    250g spaghetti
    2 eggs
    1 tbsp double cream (optional) 1
    Pinch of nutmeg
    100g pancetta, cubed 2
    1/2 garlic clove, finely chopped 3
    4 heaped tbsp (about 25g) grated Parmesan, or a combination of Parmesan and Pecorino
    Put a large pan of water on the heat for the spaghetti. Beat the eggs lightly, as you would for scrambled eggs ( see here ). Add the cream, if you’re using it. Season with a little nutmeg, and pepper if you like; you may not need more salt, because of the salty pancetta and cheese. Put the pancetta with no more than 1 dstsp olive oil in a heavy-bottomed pan, large enough to contain the spaghetti when it’s ready.
    When the pasta water is boiling, add salt, return to the boil, then add the spaghetti. (Some of it will probably stick out of the water. Allow it 20 seconds or so to soften, then stir it in.) Turn the heat under the pancetta to low/medium, and fry it gently; you’re aiming to get it ready when the pasta is cooked, so adjust the temperature accordingly. About 3 minutes before the pasta is ready, add the garlic to the pancetta, and continue frying on a very low heat, with a heat disperser under the pan if necessary.
    When the pasta is
al dente
( see here ), drain it, reserving a little of the cooking liquid. Tip the drained pasta into the pan with the pancetta. Turn off the heat under the pan, and pour in the eggs, stirring and tossing thoroughly; they should scramble in contact with the hot ingredients. Now add the cheese, and toss that in thoroughly. 4 If the mixture is too dry and sticky, moisten it with a little of the cooking liquid.