About Gourmet Pasta
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You may not suspect it from looking at your supermarket shelf, but there are about 350 shapes of pasta, in addition to a rich variety of color and size. Euro Gourmet doesn’t carry all 350 shapes, but we can assure that you will be pleasantly surprised by our selection. We offer an extensive line of dry, frozen and filled pastas.
Quite often particular shapes of pasta are paired with sauces based on cooking time, how well the pasta's shape catches and holds the sauce, and the ease with which the two items reach your mouth from your plate once combined. Some pastas are designed specifically to be filled, and often their names are very flattering descriptions of the shapes. There are flat pastas, ridged pastas, stranded noodles, flat ribbons, tubes, pasta with holes, tiny pastas, twists or spirals, stuffed pillows. Some shapes are extruded, or formed in dies, some are hand formed or rolled and cut.
Some of the many pasta types we carry are orecchiette (“little ears”- small cupped discs), pappardelle (a broad noodle), elicoidali (“helix” in Italian, tubes with spiraling ridges), strozzapreti (“priest strangler(!)", a shape resembling a rolled towel), occhi di lupo (“wolf’s eyes”- large tubes), calamari (thick rings resembling slices of calamari), and lumaconi ("large snails,"- usually stuffed and baked).
Our filled pasta varieties include truffle Ravioli, shrimp Ravioli, Cappelli stuffed with butternut squash, Mezzelune with asparagus and ricotta, saffron Ravioli with lobster, and Sacchette with pears and cheese, among many other tantalizing choices.
Euro Gourmet only supports brands which follow traditional artisanal methods to create a superior pasta, rather than the reduced quality pastas that mass production tends to offer. For instance, most industrially produced pasta is made in steel or Teflon molds, creating a pasta too smooth to properly mix with the sauce. Durum wheat pasta formed in traditional copper molds or bronze plates creates a rougher pasta that better "holds" the sauce. Mass produced pasta is also quick dried at high temperatures, whereas a slower drying time at lower temperatures yields a pasta with a shorter cook time in addition to that desirable hand-made texture. A fine pasta should display good color, a textured appearance and a heft to the package. Pasta that is pale, smooth and light signifies an inferior product that offers diminished flavor, texture, and hold during cooking.
CLICK ON THE LINKS BELOW TO LEARN MORE ABOUT SPECIFIC PRODUCTS AND THEIR RICH HISTORY:
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PASTA | OLIVE OIL | VINEGARS | FISH & SEAFOOD | VEGETABLES | MUSHROOMS
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