PASTA Crunch time for leftovers

Saut & eacute;ing penne in a bit of olive oil dramatically alters its texture.
By RENEE SCHETTLER
WASHINGTON POST
WASHINGTON -- It was an ordinary weeknight, much like any other. I stood before the open refrigerator scavenging its contents for dinner. My options were few. There was cooked penne, plain and unsauced from several days prior that looked like Legos and ... . Actually, that was pretty much it.
I stood transfixed, fingertips drumming for a few indecisive moments. Then I reached for the pasta.
I slid a cast-iron skillet over a moderate flame, poured in just enough olive oil to coat the surface and waited for a minute or two before I tipped in the contents of the container. The oil sputtered furiously as I pried apart the largest pasta clumps with a wooden spoon and then gently nudged the individual penne into a single layer. Then I stood back and barely tended the skillet at all, resisting the urge to stir the pasta more than every so often.
The contact with the hot skillet dramatically altered the texture of the starch. What was moments before cold and gummy was now deep golden, slightly blistered and just this side of crunchy. Crisped, rather.
Transformation
The surface gave way -- shattered, really -- at the touch of a fork to reveal an interior that was even more profoundly altered. In sharp contrast to the exterior, it was remarkably light, more a puff of hot air than anything belonging to the realm of solids. The pasta had been elevated to a lofty alter-ego by the hot skillet and oil, transformed in the same way as certain other cold starches such as leftover boiled potatoes or slices of cold polenta.
Countless home cooks before me have come to this same revelation.
"My grandmother used to do it with leftover spaghetti from lunch," says Roberto Donna, chef and owner of Galileo Restaurant here. She would start with leftover pasta that had been tossed with tomato sauce. Once sauced, the long, slender strands of cold pasta formed a tangle of sorts that packed easily in a pan. She would saut & eacute; it with just a touch of oil so that it would crisp around the edges. "It was always the best dish. My grandfather and I used to fight for it," adds Donna.
Preparation ideas
That night, I had tossed plain pasta into the skillet. Then I fried a couple of eggs in a separate skillet, seasoned them with plenty of cracked black pepper and perched them atop the crisped penne, relying on the runny yolks to create a sauce of sorts. On subsequent scavenging nights, I have alternately paired the crisped pasta with a tomato and basil sauce spooned straight from the jar, leftover roast beef ragout, saut & eacute;ed garlicky greens, coarsely chopped Cerignola olives mashed with lemon zest, black pepper and copious amounts of olive oil. And, on some meager nights, nothing but a drizzle of a mild Spanish Arbequina olive oil and coarse sea salt.
Despite its bewitching effect, crisped pasta is simple, if not unexpected, fare. It may not merit placement on expense-account restaurant menus or even common cookbook pages. But boy is it good.
Some tips
I prefer plain pasta so that nothing can run interference between hot skillet and cold pasta. Using pasta that has been tossed in tomato sauce impedes the crisping of the pasta. Plain pasta also offers a lot more versatility once it comes from the skillet. You may sauce it according to whim, whereas with sauced pasta the topping is already entirely determined.
Short, tubular pasta like penne is easier to work with than long strands of spaghetti or linguine. Besides, the thicker the pasta, the airier the interior becomes.
The only steadfast rule is that the crisping cannot be rushed. Heat the flame too high or the pasta too long and what emerges are crisp semolina shards that poke you in the cheek as surely and painfully as metal wires after an orthodontist checkup.
To accentuate the contrast between regular and crisped pasta, use a cast-iron rather than a nonstick skillet.
And to maximize the potential for crisping, use only cooked pasta that has been refrigerated for several hours. Using freshly cooked pasta makes for dense, gummy crisped pasta rather than ethereally light crisped pasta.