I saw in the recipes that Candele is usually used by cutting into 2 or 3 pieces.
More on it if you’re interested.
Candele are a traditional pasta of Southern Italy, especially Campania. Pretty obviously, the word ‘candele’ means candles and this pasta appears to have been inspired by the long slim candles used in Catholic religious processions. Long being the operative word as candele are about 50cm in length!
Candele are only found as dried pasta. They are extruded through bronze dies and dried for around 70 hours at a very low temperature!! Before modern technology made cutting pasta into smaller shapes possible, tubular and long pasta such as candele and spaghetti, were left to dry in long forms and broken into smaller pieces before cooking.
Mac & cheese: cavatappi
Pasta salad: elbows, rotini, small shells, farfalle, maybe cavatappi, maybe penne
Clam sauce: linguine or thin spaghetti
Red sauce: linguine or thin spaghetti
Tuna noodle and many other casseroles: wide egg noodles
Goulash: elbows
Stuffed shells: jumbo shells
Lasagna: lasagna
Pasta e Fagioli: ditaloni
at sea: any small shape close to the front of the locker
This has been great; thank you. I don’t eat much pasta, but might say paparadelle, and carbonara or cacio e pepe with any “long pasta” are my favorites. My husband absolutely prefers short pasta, which doesn’t seem to be offered frequently enough, and is therefore hard to plan travel around. After reading these posts, I continue to wonder why “short pasta” is not offered more frequently.
For dry pasta, campanelle fits a lot of purposes for me. Linguini is versatile, as well. I also use orzo quite often. For some reason, I don’t care for farfalle, penne or rigatoni.
Linguini w/red sauce and meatballs
Orecchiette w/hot Italian sausage, spinach, chicken broth and Romano cheese to make a creamy sauce.
Least favorites: Rigatoni & Ziti. This stems from my childhood. Rigatoni was way too big back then and ziti was reserved for what my family considered pasta fazool with red pepper and cici beans.
I think I can see why it ends up on a children’s menu. (Do they have those in Europe?).
With regard to why “short pastas” are not more often in restaurants, are short pastas mostly extruded and dried, and other pastas more often fresh and “chefy”?
For reasons I don’t quite understand, I want to like orichiete, but I have the same clumping problem. I like cavatappi as a better alternative to basic elbows.
I like bucatini and most often use it instead of spaghetti,
I really love handmade strozzapreti. They seem to both grab and absorb sauces and are sturdy enough to support hefty sauce ingredients like chanterelle or porcini or chunks of seafood.
The enormous serving at Piccino in San Francisco’s Dog Patch neighborhood is the plate of my dreams.
Sort of hijacking. What brands do you all buy and are they typically available in a regular grocery? i haven’t even seen 1/2 the shapes mentioned above in my regular grocery, and even fewer among the brand I buy. We generally get Barilla. It is economical, especially when on sale. I’ve seen but not bought any pasta at Costco. I tried orechiette from Trader Joes once, and it all fell apart into little bits before the suggested cooking time was up.
ETA - Barilla in my store has spaghetti, thin, and angel hair. Bow ties, spirals, shells, penne, rigatoni, and elbows. I think that’s it.
Private Selection(Kroger store brand) is what i buy if the store has what i’m looking for in stock. Also, Barilla fairly often and occasionally De Cecco.
Used to consume a lot of Barilla in my younger days, then there was the De Cecco and Garofalo period a few years back. Nowadays, I like Rummo for its firmer texture in spaghetti especially.
