“If I rinse the pasta, I lose my job!” Luca Ciano, Australasian chef for Barilla Pasta, quipped in his truly Italian accent as he drained an enormous bowl of perfectly cooked pasta. “Now the pasta is hot and thirsty so we need to give it some beautiful flavours to soak up” He tipped in a bowl of thinly sliced celery, spring onion, cherry tomatoes, basil and rocket. Then generously doused it with extra virgin olive oil, a jar of ricotta sauce and some grated, salted ricotta. With a few deft tosses of the bowl the pasta was ready for the 40 or so of us food writers and media to try – bellisimo!

What a great way to spend a Tuesday morning – learning about pasta and getting the Italian perspective on all those pasta cooking queries.

Should I add salt to the cooking water?

Yes – to add flavour. No other reason – just flavour as the pasta absorbs the water and swells.

Should I add oil to the cooking water?

Never! Oil just coats the pasta and causes the sauce to slide off rather than bind.

Why does my pasta stick to the side of the pot?

Either you need to give it a good stir when you add it, or you are using a poor quality pasta which releases lots of sticky starch as it cooks. Ah ha! Finally I have found out why my budget pasta goes sticky and soggy – even when it’s not over-cooked! I’m off to buy a pasta that uses a high quality wheat. It really does make a difference.

How can you tell if a pasta is good quality?

If the water doesn’t froth intensely when boiled and remains clear after cooking, you’re onto a winner. Hmm – when I drain my cheap pasta the water is anything but clear! All that starch that’s meant to stay in the pasta goes down the sink and makes the sieve hard to clean.

The better the pasta, the less sauce

A general rule is to use as much sauce as pasta. “Kiwis and Aussies use far too much sauce,” Luca chided us. “We’re having pasta, not sauce with pasta!” Oh dear – yet another pasta blooper I’ve often made.

I often use pasta as a base to get fussy kids to eat meat and vegetables (disguised as pasta sauce). I even serve thick soup over pasta for kids who don’t like soup. But I would never have admitted that yesterday surrounded as I was by brilliant cooks. I have been inspired to move up a notch from ‘mother-cook-anyway-you-can-to-get-the-healthy-food-in’ to cooking real pasta the real way. Let’s see if the family notice any difference!