Judging by the enduring popularity of Italian food all over the world, almost everyone feels at least a little bit Italian. For many of us, Italian food is the ultimate comfort food, especially when it comes to pasta. And no pasta dish is more comforting than spaghetti with a really good sauce..
Italians believe that the character of a person can be determined by the way s/he eats spaghetti. It is considered good manners to eat pasta with only a fork, not a fork and a spoon.
So serve your pasta in warm, shallow bowls instead of on dinner plates, as the sides of the bowl will aid in turning pasta on the fork.
SPAGHETTI 101
Spaghetti is originally from Naples in Italy, where the strands were up to 50cm long. Today the strands have halved, but it's still one of Italy's favourite dishes with each Italian region boasting its own signature spaghetti dish..
Just to set thing straight, 'spaghetti' is the plural form of the Italian word spaghetto, which is a diminutive of spago, meaning "thin string" or "twine." Spaghettoni is a thicker spaghetti which takes more time to cook while spaghettini and vermicelli are very thin spaghetti (both of which you may have heard of as angel hair spaghetti in English).
SPAGHETTI LOVES THESE SAUCES.jpg "Wholewheat spaghetti with tomatoes, capers, basil and mozzarella")
Wholewheat spaghetti is alltogether a modern thing, and healthy as it is, is not enjoyed by the Italians at all. But we do recommend you try Abigail's wholewheat spaghetti tossed with sun-ripened tomatoes, fresh basil and silky mozzarella, though. It is fresh, wholesome and a great dish to serve a hungry crowd along with crisp ciabatta and bottles of Chianti.
You can also find variously flavoured spaghetti, such as with squid ink, spinach or beetroot. We are still trying to find that extra flavour... So best you buy the most expensive, freshest flavoured pasta or, better still, make it yourself at home.
CLASSIC SPAGHETTI SAUCES
Carbonara (egg and bacon) sauce contains no cream but a mixture of beaten raw egg and cheese that creates the 'creaminess'. Try our recipe for pasta with asparagus carbonara or spaghetti enrobed in mascapone and gorgonzola carbonara
Bolognese (meat) is a classic Italian minced meat sauce, known as a ragu.Sometimes it's also made with roasted silverside. Some Mama's swear by adding grated carrots and celery to the sauce to thicken and flavour it. Try our reader's all-time favourite spaghetti with bolognese. 
Marinara (seafood) can be made with mussels and any mix of seafood (Woolworths' marinara mix is perfect) mixed into a tomato, wine and garlic sauce. A delicious, fresh and easy variant is chilli, fresh tomato and mussel pasta
Vongole (clam) sauce is made by adding clams to chopped tomatoes, garlic, parsley, olive oil and Nigella's secret ingredient, a teaspoon of anchovy paste. A real show stopper pasta dish in similar vein is Florentine of scollops on lemon-minted spaghetti.
Spaghetti and meatballs (not strictly Italian) is more popular than ever thanks to all the American food programmes we get to see nowadays. The secret apparently lies in using fresh breadcrumbs soaked in milk, and a mix of pork or veal and organic beef mince. We recommend Phillippa's herbed tomato-vegetable soup with spaghetti meatballs.
TOP SPAGHETTTI COOKING TIPS
After cooking, good pasta should look moist rather than gummy. All the pieces should be separate and have a uniform texture. The water should be clear. If it is floury, there was ordinary flour in the pasta.
Save some of the water the pasta was cooked in. Even if it looks clear it will have some starch, which is useful for thinning a sauce and binding it at the same time.
Italian cooks don't usually drain their pasta but rather lift it out of the pot with tongs or a strainer. In this way the pasta stays wet, so that as it finishes cooking out of the pot. It also has water to absorb which prevents it from sticking to itself immediately.
If you are a stickler for draining, look for a pot with a colander insert, which will enable you to lift all the pasta out at once. Ignore instructions to add cold water to the pot to stop cooking, because the water left on the drained pasta won't be hot enough to evaporate and will make the pasta slimy. For the same reason it is a bad idea to rinse the pasta after it is cooked—a cardinal sin in Italy.
However you drain cooked pasta, transfer it right away to a warm bowl. The plates should be hot too.
Homemade pasta is so good, you'll never look back. Read TASTE's Hannah's adventures with her pasta machine.
MORE ITALIAN COOKING TIPS AND TRICKS
TRY THESE SPAGHETTI RECIPES: