Annelletti

Let's talk about Annelletti, those little rings you boil for the Sicilian baked pasta. Pick up a handful before you buy them. They should feel hard and dry, almost like tiny shells, with no dust sitting at the bottom of the bag. Look at a few side by side — the colour should be even, ring to ring, with no grey or chalky patches. Smell them too — good Annelletti smell faintly of wheat, never musty, never flat.

Some people say pasta rings like these are just small macaroni, nothing special: cook them however long you like. No! Drop a few into boiling water and watch them — you want to pull them out while they still give some resistance when you bite, not when they go soft all through. Bite into one and you'll feel a firm, slightly chewy core. That's what carries them through the oven, where they'll cook again with sauce and cheese and still come out with a bit of bite left in the middle, instead of giving way under the fork.

Treat Annelletti like ordinary macaroni and boil them until fully soft, and you'll see the mistake on the table: the baked pasta turns mushy on the fork, the rings collapse into each other, and what should have been a dish with structure becomes a spoonful of paste.