Cookware · Hearths
Pasta pot
A tall pot of fierce salted water: the other half of every Italian sauce that finishes in the tegame.
The journey
Italian home cooking is two vessels talking. The tegame holds the sauce. The pasta pot holds the sea — water salted until it tastes like it. Eighteen recipes in the Italian volume bother to name the pot because the water is an ingredient, not a step you skip.
A small saucepan makes glue. A tall pot lets the pasta move.
In the kitchen
Water first, salt when it boils, pasta in, stir once. Save a ladle of the water before you drain. The sauce and the noodles meet in the tegame, not on the plate.
The Italian book assumes this pot the way it assumes a wooden spoon.