There were beverages laid out for the party
There were candy and spices and tricolored pastas
-- Ween, "Your Party"
After my last blog about the squid ink pasta at the fine Pasta Shop & Ristorante, I got something of a major jonesing for more colored pasta to eat at home. The usual spinach fettuccine, rainbow farfalle and rotelli so common in grocery store “Italian” sections would not do, rather some truly unique multi-hued and dyed pastas were needed.
I found a number of new pasta palettes – but be warned, these all come at something of a premium price. Normal dried pasta is a
commodity product, and still ranges around $1 - $2 a pound, even in a global scheme of rising wheat, water, energy and shipping costs.
The least inexpensive colored pasta listed below went for over $3 per package, even at only half a pound. Generally, these pastas all reached toward $8 - $10 a pound, sans sauce costs. But this was a culinary experiment, not a usual nights carbo load or just plain eating.
So let the colors present themselves ...
The first pasta I tried was something known as Foglie d'Autunno, or autumn leaves. They were from Apulia, a region in far southern Italy, and featured textured, oblong leaf shapes in a host of seasonally appropriate
colors derived from beets, spinach, carrot and that magical squid ink for the “oldest” fallen leaves.
The pasta was very firm to the tooth with a Bolognese sauce I made with slow-braised, zinfandel-marinated short ribs and veal. Very enjoyable.
Next I boiled up some saffron-infused fettuccine from Greece (a pasta country indeed, a fact often overlooked with our gyro fascinations). It was very delicate even to a bare cooking, and tore too easily in a fennel-laced tomato sauce with shrimps, scallops, cod and slipper lobster tails. The saffron taste in the noodle was just barely a hint. But the mix took on a Provencal tinge with the scant saffron and fennel.
My 
next foray was with some outlandish-looking, serrated-edged, thick pappardelle packaged with the humorous (if historically snarky) name of “Mother in Law's Tongue.” These babies looked like ribbon candy or that old Fruit Stripe gum blown up in proportions. They were ribbed with amazingly regular bands of red, pink, orange and green. The instructions on a flier in the box stated that the thick noodles needed to be treated like fresh pasta and cooked gently.
I missed 
the instructions and cooked the ribbons like normal, even robust, dried pasta and they turned out nicely al dente, integral and with the color bands staying discrete and visible. (Not sure why such gingerly touched advice was given by the manufacturers, that great industrial term for pasta makers.) I went with a lighter vodka tomato sauce with an Americanism – broiled chicken breast.) This was my favorite pasta of the bunch to eat, actually.
Finally. I grabbed a bag of a rustic “Frecce dell'orto.” These colored beauties are rolled on thin rods or string and look something like candle wicks. I teamed
them up with a hearty sausage ragout and lots of asiago. They were the most workman-like of my colored test experience. Some leftovers are waiting right now for me to finish writing.
My running experiment in pasta color theory is probably done. Mostly for the cost. There's a reason pasta is so everyday, so ubiquitous. In its most basic form it's cost-effective and pliable. The exotic colored varieties are good for periodic updates to the Italianate dinner table elements.
And now, something completely different
I purchased most of the colored pastas listed above at the Cost Plus World Market on Rainbow.
While buying the formed farinas, I came across bottles of fizzy elderflower water. The whole idea
of drinking some elderflower syrup touched my English majors, and earlier (and still) Tolkein-loving fantasy worlds, plus my absolute love of carbonated waters.
This English beverage was a bit citrusy (too much after I read the high lemon juice component ratio, lemon lover that I am – more flower bells!) with a honeysuckle and faint kiwi-ish touch.
I won't be guzzling more bottles – it was also a touch too sweet for my water tastes. But it did bring a bit of the English countryside to a windy and rough rain Mojave day.
(This blog is movin' on up from dry to al dente with the help of Primal Scream's "Screamadelica.")