Many persons who eat pasta do so elegantly.
Some do not.
It really depends on the use of the fork. If you twirl a few strands of pasta on your fork, it will be not messy. If you just take a vast amount of pasta and suck it in, that's more messy.
Don't be messy.
1) Take fork
2) On the edge of the plate twirl until pasta forms a ball on the fork
3) Eat.
4) A spoon is a better option.
Does that apply to Italians and/or visitors? Who is this message directed to?
Use chop sticks. :) Its very amusing. :)
What does this have to do with italy specifically? Pasta is eaten all over the world! Perhaps not in the frozen north
So what would you change ?
So what would you change ?
My question exactly.
I would require that pasta eaters pasta a testa.
oh - it is a joke. ha.
Those are skills that you can master only if you learn early as a kid.
Early October must be a slow time of the year in Sioux Falls.
My husband who was not raised in an Italian family like I was, has always felt disadvantaged by the fact that he can't twirl. For the 4 decades of our marriage he has sit at the family table chopping up his pasta and forking it in. On all our trips to Italy he's done the same. What he finally realized is that no one - at home or in Italy - cares. Just enjoy the pasta and PRAISE THE COOK!
Que cosa. You mean twirling up a big wad and trimming off the dangling ends with scissors is acceptable?
The movie Enchanted April is about four almost random British women with different levels of sophistication who rent a villa in Italy together for a month. It takes place somewhere around 1920. There's a hilarious scene where two of the women are trying to eat pasta using the typical British knife and fork technic. They try to be elegant and proper but many of us can sympathize. I think over the month, it got easier for them. A very slow but delightful movie about the influence Italy can have on people.
As I understand, the spoon thing was a trend/popular practice in Italy in the time of the diaspora and immigrants to the US brought it with them when they came over. My mom learned to eat pasta by twirling with a spoon (as did I) and her grandparents emigrated to New Jersey from Italy in the early 1900s
according to my italian ex (milanese, with one parent from the north the other from sicily) twirling pasta in a spoon is bad form. i learned to twirl on the plate without slippage! shall we talk about eating pizza with fingers or with a knife and fork too? now that's a controversial subject!
I am a heretic here. Growing up we were served spaghetti in a bowl and we cut it up with a knife and then ate it with our forks. Never questioned it.
People do things out of habit and how they were raised. Maybe the twirl was your thing. Maybe you are now trying to undo a habit that is not twirl.
In Asia where noodles are prominent, there are many slurpers. Using chopsticks. I do that if I eat noodles over there. You may not even have a fork.
So twirl. Twirl with a spoon to assist, or slurp. But maybe do as the local fashion is and you will learn how to eat your noodles any which way and be a worldly noodle head.
There is no elegant in noodles as Paul wants us to think.
I'm sticking with my request that we all learn how to properly twirl our pasta. It just looks so .... unpleasant .... to watch someone sucking up a bunch of pasta. I learned the twirl thing when I was about 6, and it was obviously so much more sensible and neat.
Nothing makes you look more like a tourist than eating pasta by imitating a vacuum cleaner.
Why are you watching people eat anyway? Avert your eyes.
This is the fastest way to eat noodles without sounding like a vacuum cleaner.
I would require all Italian restaurants to play Italian music! We have been all over Northern and Central Italy and they play American soft rock. Ugh, so annoying. Finally in Assisi we heard traditional Italian music. It's so much a part of our dining experience.
Maybe their local Italian customers prefer the soft rock?
We learned the proper twirling method on Rick's radio show. I think it was Alfio who explained the proper method of twirling just a couple of strands on a fork. It works!
I never understood the spoon thing, though. We had dinner recently at a very $$$ Italian restaurant here, and those of us who had ordered long pasta were ceremoniously presented with spoons.
As an aside: For some reason, the Tulsa area is blessed with a number of excellent Italian restaurants. Two of them are run by actual Italian immigrants, but the others, equally as good, are not. There's not a big Italian community here, so I've been a bit puzzled by the number of really good Italian eateries here, especially at the "fine dining" level.
The "spoon thing" simply allows you to do the twirling in an isolated place. If you do it on the plate, you may pick up additional strands of noodle, and end up with a bigger package than is good to work with. I prefer the spoon approach. We always ask for a spoon. It's odd that this is not a standard piece of restaurant cutlery today. It's always necessary to request a spoon.
Not that its important. My Sicilian immigrant in-laws would say that using a spoon to assist twirling long pasta was something only kids were permitted to do. That was an embarrassing moment at my first dinner with them.
Not that its important. My Sicilian immigrant in-laws would say that using a spoon to assist twirling long pasta was something only kids were permitted to do.
OK that's a good one. I did learn it as a 6 YO. Perhaps I need to work on my technique.
Spoons are declassé. You can do it in the privacy of your own home, but not in polite company. Learn to twirl. It's not so hard; I've been doing it since I learned how to use a fork. And I'm a klutz. Re: music. Really? You want traditional Italian music? Um, last time I looked (and I live in Italy), it's a modern European country. Please, we don't have to conform to any misplaced stereotypes or nostalgia. We're stuck enough in the past.
Most Neapolitans I know Would never dream of eating Pizza with their hands. But they wouldn't frown upon those that eat pizza this way, either.
Fork, knife & pizza... spoons & spaghetti... Eat as you prefer and relax: none here is applying for Italian citizenship.
If the pizza doesn't have a firm/crispy crust, I'm in the knife-and-fork club. Beats dribbling toppings down the front of my shirt!
I think some do not understand the spoon comment. The point is that you take the fork, select 1-2 strands of pasta, and then in the bowl of the spoon you do the twirl. You don't actually move any material using the spoon.
