About Gourmet Pasta
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You might not know it looking at your supermarket shelf, but there are about 350 shapes of pasta. Euro Gourmet doesn’t carry all of them, but you will find more than you are accustomed to. We offer an extensive line of both dry and frozen pasta, most of the frozen pasta being of the filled variety
Often a particular shape of pasta is paired with a certain type of sauce, based on cooking time, how well the pasta catches and holds the sauce, and the ease of conveying the pasta-sauce combination to your mouth.Some are designed to be filled. The names, translated from the Italian, are often lovely descriptors 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), lumaconi (large “snails”, usually stuffed and baked).
Our filled pastas 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.
As with most food products, industrial mass production techniques have led to a reduction in quality. Traditional artisanal methods create a superior pasta.An example of this is that most industrially produced pasta is made in steel or Teflon molds, creating a pasta too smooth to “grab” the sauce properly. Traditional copper molds or bronze plates create a rougher pasta that holds sauce better. Mass produced pasta is also quick dried at high temperature, whereas a slower drying time at lower temperatures produces a quicker cooking pasta with better texture. A fine pasta should have a good color, a textured appearance and a heft to the package. Pale, smooth, light pasta is an inferior product with less flavor, texture, sauce holding properties, and ability to hold together during cooking. The pasta we sell is typically made with slower traditional techniques, bronze plates, and high quality durum wheat.
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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