Master Grazia’s life skills

Gennaro Contaldo, chef and restaurateur who taught Jamie Oliver about Italian cooking, and author of a dozen best-selling cookbooks

Pasta likes to dance; it likes to have room to move and splash and enjoy the water, so make sure you cook it in a big enough saucepan. When cooking dry pasta, add one litre of water for every hundred grams of pasta. The right amount of salt is also important. Boil the water and then add five to seven grams of salt. Don’t add olive oil, as it just clumps together and stays on the top. It’s a waste of good olive oil.

Always cook dry pasta al dente, which means it’s just a little undercooked. If the packet says eight minutes, I suggest you do six minutes – another two minutes goes by while you’re mixing the sauce and starting to eat. Strain the pasta and put it back into the pot you boiled it in, adding a little bit of pasta water back in, then add your sauce.

Finally, put the pot back on the gas on a low heat for a little bit and give it a good stir. You want the pasta to grab all the salt. The sauce and pasta become a perfect marriage. Don’t cover the pasta in sauce; how many times have you picked up your fork-full and it’s splashed on your T-shirt? It doesn’t want to be too wet or too dry.

When it’s al dente it means you chew it a bit longer; the food stays in your mouth a bit more, so you have more time to enjoy the flavour of the pasta. Chewing just a little bit longer helps you digest it better as well! This is why Italians like our pasta best of all. Gennaro Contaldo’s new book, ‘Pasta Perfecto!’ (£18.99, Pavilion Books) is out 5 September