Throughout my culinary education one thing was continuously beaten into my head: Always cook pasta in a liberal amount of salted water! The water to pasta ratio should be as high as possible. Though recently cooking with my step-mom (who has an Italian heritage) shattered this pasta cooking concept. She cooked her pasta in as little liquid as possible, and not just water, she uses stock! It's so simple, and so brilliant. The pasta takes on the flavor of the stock, turning it into a meal of it's own, and not just another starchy vehicle for other foods. Also, I haven't observed any adverse effects of cooking pasta in a minimal amount of liquid -I've actually been trying to cook pasta in exactly enough liquid, so there's hardly any left in the pan by the time it's done cooking. When I saw my step-mom do this for the first time, I mentioned it must be her Italian heritage, because it's an Italian tradition (in some regions, at least), to cook pasta in a minimal amount of water and use the water as the base for the pasta sauce. My step-mom had never heard of this, so it's clearly just in her blood to do awesome things with pasta. And now, a picture of pasta in stock!:
Noodles cooked in broth is a no-brainer that I've never thought of. I'm excited to try this out (cue Candice's chicken broth).
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