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For years I've cooked pasta. It began as a student at university. Mince was cheap, and a pasta dish contained all things a malnourished student would want. Lots of carbohydrates, with a meaty topping, garnished with a few handfuls of cheese. For the relative cost, the meal was fantastic, I think we had it down to around $15NZ which would then feed two famished students or 4-5 not so hungry ones (poor man or student pasta).

Pasta with a good pasta sauce is possibly one of the most satisfying meals to create. So easy to get the basics, but limitless potentials to explore. Cutting fresh ingredients, sauté them, add herbs, garlic or onion. The smell of the flavours developing together over a few hours. The white or red wine and/or stock releasing the caramelised onions from the bottom of a pan on a low heat.

After being exposed to pasta meals for so long, I started to venture forth and query the technicalities. I always referred to the mince pasta I was creating as “Spaghetti Bolognese!”, little did I know that Bolognese traditionally contains chicken liver, which could be substituted for lamb liver. The chicken liver adds a piquant (pleasantly biting or tart) flavor. And apparently its origins date back to Romen times.

So here are the discoveries and tips on creating that obscure pasta sauce recipe you've always loved.

Pasta

Although I want to mainly focus on sauces it wouldn't be fair to ignore the pasta.

Pasta is an Italian word meaning literally a paste of flour and water. Spaghetti, Macaroni and other different shapes made of semolina, or flour, water and sometimes eggs, are all pasta. Pasta is also made in small shapes, shells, bows, stars and so on.

The Larger shapes are good with chicken or veal dishes instead of potato. The smaller shapes are used in clear and broth soups. Usually pasta is served with a sauce either mixed in with it, or as an accompaniment.

The preliminary cooking is always the same gentle simmering in salted water or stock until barley tender (10 – 20 min). To test: try a piece between your teeth, it should be just firm (or if you can sever it with your thumbnail it's done). Strain off at once and rinse with 1-2 cups of hot or cold water, this washes the starch off the pasta. While boiling pasta, bits of flour will naturally disperse in the water. Although straining is not explicitly needed, I like to wash pasta in cold water if I'm cooking large quantities. Large quantities of fresh from the pot pasta will still cook in the center of the pile if left for a few minutes. Over cooked pasta is the worst thing, especially if you've taken time to prepare a time consuming pasta sauce, it can ruin it. I find large batches of pasta will still cook in the middle after straining. If the pasta has to be kept for a while before service, to stop it going sticky: pour hot water into a the pan just to cover the bottom, then put the pasta back in; Cover and leave in a warm place. Just before serving toss a nut/nob of butter through the pasta.

Pasta Sauces

It's hard to say how may variations there are of pasta sauce recipes. Same say there are five

• Red
• Green
• Cream/Alfredo
• Meat
• Fish

But this doesn't quite make sense to me. A red sauce is tomato or pimento based, and green sauce broccoli, spinach or any above ground vegetable that can photosynthesize. And a meat sauce like Amatriciana Sauce or Bolognese Sauce contains a red/tomato base. And as you'll find on this site, a carrot pasta sauce, wouldn't that be defined as an orange sauce? And does meat include poultry, or should that be another category?

This is an entirely personal view, but I consider most pasta sauces to be vegetarian, mostly. With the exceptions of fattening being used in the sauce base. Or Pork/Ham offers itself to almost any dish and can be used in the base of a sauce, or duck fat, or chicken stock made from the bones. These would all un-vegetarian a sauce, but could all potentially be used. I like to think that all "basic pasta sauce recipes" are vegetarian and everything else is optional to taste. And the carrot sauce on this site is basically a cream base with carrots amended. I tend to think of sauce to go with a meat, or visa verse.

So with all that in mind I'm going to state that there are only three, pasta sauces.

• Red
• Green
• Cream/Alfredo

With these as the base, endless variations can be made. All to suit personal taste.

Origins

There is some evidence of an Etrusco-Roman noodle made from the same durum wheat as modern pasta called "lagane" (origin of the modern word for lasagna). However this food, first mentioned in the 1st century AD was not boiled like pasta, it was cooked in an oven. Therefore ancient lagane had some similarities, but cannot be considered pasta. The next culinary leap in the history of pasta would take place a few centuries later.

The Arab invasions of the 8th century heavily influenced the regional cuisine and is the most accepted theory for the introduction of pasta. The dried noodle-like product they introduced to Sicily is most likely the origins of dried pasta and was being produced in great quantities in Palermo at this time.

By the 1300's dried pasta was very popular for its nutrition and long shelf life, making it ideal for long ship voyages. Pasta made it around the globe during the voyages of discovery a century later. By that time different shapes of pasta have appeared and new technology made pasta easier to make.

It wasn't until the 19th century when pasta met tomatoes. Although tomatoes were brought back to Europe shortly after their discovery in the New World, it took a long time for the plant to be considered edible. In fact tomatoes are a member of the nightshade family and rumors of tomatoes being poisonous continued in parts of Europe and its colonies until the mid 19th century. Therefore it was not until 1839 that the first pasta recipe with tomatoes was documented. However shortly thereafter tomatoes took hold, especially in the south of Italy.