Editor’s Note: This is another in a series of articles at The Selective Echo featuring the various foodstuffs that comprise the exceptional offerings at Tony Caputo’s Market and Deli.

It’s an amusing sight for Matt Caputo. Customers pop into Aquarius Fish Market next door to his family’s market and deli; purchase first-rate fresh scallops, clams, mussels or shrimp, and then stop by Caputo’s to pick up a mass-produced bag of pasta, the canvas for that evening’s dinner.

“It’s like taking a Ferrari to a Maaco shop for a paint job,” Matt says.

Pasta remains the quotidian experience for Italians, who still far outrun Americans when it comes to how much of the stuff they eat every year. Italians lead the world, consuming 28 kilograms (some 62 pounds per capita), more than double Venezuela, the second highest. Meanwhile, pasta per capita consumption in the United States is among the highest in the world but just 9 kilograms (approximately 20 pounds).

Yet, because of its elemental nature and its glorious history, pasta is the platform which has made Italian food easier to embrace for Americans and non-Europeans alike. And, it has an often misunderstood and misapplied status as a foodstuff that remarkably is quite economical when done properly. In fact, its simplicity is its culinary elegance.

There are two aspects to pasta at Caputo’s Market and Deli, both of which underscore the family’s much larger mission of a local food enterprise that is sustainable, accessible, and affordable and that celebrates why truly fresh, environmentally responsible ingredients comprise the cornerstone of good cooking. First is the store’s substantial offering of reasonably priced artisanal dried pasta – pasta secca – that often run just between two to five dollars more per package than the mass-produced stuff. The value and quality in exchange for that price premium becomes an exceptional economic deal.

And, then there is the fresh pasta which is getting a major lift from the talents of Adam Kreisel, a chef well known to Salt Lake City’s foodies, who is going to help the Caputos launch a small pasta-risotto restaurant in the heart of their downtown headquarters. More about Adam a bit further down.

Mario Batali, the great Italian chef, states it simply:

“What you want to eat when you eat a bowl of pasta … is pasta … The way that they refer to their sauce in Italy is condimento—condiment—and when you think about a hot dog or hamburger, the condiment is something that kind of greases it up, but it never overtakes the main event of the hot dog or the hamburger. … Americans overdress their pasta 99.9 percent of the time. It should never be a bowl of soup. It should be noodles, with a little stuff.”

And, Matt echoes Batali’s sentiments. Indeed, fresh pasta is a phenomenal food and come February Salt Lake City customers will have a first-hand seat to seeing how fresh pasta becomes an artistic canvas, especially in Kreisel’s hands. It also is a difficult foodstuff to make. Most American-made fresh pasta that is available in stores is unforgiving. Often overworked and excessively extruded, it turns frequently into a gooey mass in boiling water.

But, the reality is that, many Italians, like Americans, get most of their daily pasta fix from the box. However, Italians know the difference between an industrially-made product and one crafted by artisanal producers who use the classic old-fashioned method. As Matt notes, serving an inferior, mass-produced dry pasta in an Italian home is tantamount to an abrasive insult.

The best dried pasta comes from a wheat flour blend that includes a hard durum-wheat flour. This is higher in protein and is effective against the rigors of pasta making. Most fresh pasta is made by using a softer wheat flour blend.

Regarding dried pastas, among the imported brands carried at Caputo’s is Rustichella d’Abruzzo. One look at a bag of this pasta immediately shows the difference in appearance. Unlike the mass-produced brands, the artisanal pasta has a natural, rustic look and feel. There are two important differences in the process, according to Matt. The pasta is extruded through bronze dies instead of industrial Teflon. Thus, the pasta has a roughly textured surface far more effective in allowing the sauce to cling to it, rather than slip off. Also, the pasta has a nuttier flavor and distinct aroma, thanks to a slow drying process at low temperatures. On the other hand, industrial pasta is dried quickly at temperatures reaching as much as 190 degrees, or even higher at times.

The difference matters because the drying gives the artisanal brand a creamier-looking hue. In the industrially produced version, toasting occurs – what chemists call the Maillard reaction – and this is what gives industrially made pasta its darker hue. It also leads most frequently to overcooked pasta.

No doubt, the artisanal brands are worth the few extra dollars but Matt adds many customers wonder just how long such pasta should be cooked. The tendency is to overcook the pasta but only recently have some artisanal Italian pasta producers begrudgingly added approximating guidelines for cooking times. The length is affected by a variety of factors. Utah’s high altitude is just one factor in cooking time, for example.

For philosophical, soulful Italians, al dente’s interpretation might seem frustratingly elusive to many Americans who dutifully watch the clock to take the pot off the stove and drain the pasta. Experts say that when one cuts a strand of pasta and sees that it appears to be cooked thoroughly except for a very small spot at the center where it has a not-quite-raw texture, then that is true al dente.

Matt says the only real way is to test it and then test it once again. “You have to trust your instincts,” he says, adding that one should never rinse the pasta once it’s been drained in the colander. “You’re rinsing off the important starches that make the sauce cling to the pasta,” he explains.

Dressing the pasta suggests as many options as there are idiosyncratic, ethnic, social, and cultural preferences. Mindful of Batali’s remarks, one can dress it simply with fresh ingredients or with a complex sauce that still is uncluttered and distinct in its exceptional ingredients.

As for exceptional pasta and risotto dishes, Adam will be taking the lead in a venture that appears to be a genius exercise in culinary, organizational, financial, and business development logistics. In the middle of February, for five nights a week, Caputo’s will begin offering dinner service in a 40-seat establishment ensconced within their market and deli operations.

The menu will represent a continuous work of progress, featuring fresh pasta and risotto dishes that convey the best locally available, seasonably appropriate ingredients as well as the fine meats, cheeses, and products in the Caputo shop. To boot, Adam will be using locally grown livestock from environmentally responsible, sustainable farms and will be using everything from tip to tail in those animals. There will be absolutely no waste, including the bones and marrow. For example, a ragu featuring pork spine would be a possibility as he tried out recently with gratifying results.

Perhaps, most importantly, the innovative dinners will be remarkably affordable for customers because of the cross-pollenization model that is being offered by Caputo’s, including a staff that already is well trained in the contents of what undoubtedly will be the most impressive larder and pantry ever found in a Salt Lake City restaurant.

Adam’s own sense of culinary venture fits well within the cultural-culinary-civic enterprise that has been built impressively under the leadership of Tony Caputo and his family. Adam, 36, originally from Boston who has a background in economics, art, and architecture, studied at the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco. In the Salt Lake City dining scene, he gained recognition for his work as an executive chef at the Globe Café, Sundance Resort, and more recently, Acme Burger Company.

However, pasta appears to be the foundation of his animus. He credits that to a middle-aged Nicaraguan chef back in San Francisco. “I remember coming in on an apprenticeship every Saturday morning – five a.m. – learning to make all sorts of pastas. He was so good and passionate about it. I took a lot of that understanding of what pasta is supposed to be – the feel of the dough, the rhythm, and the muscle memory.”

The impression was indelible because only within the last three years did Adam reconnect routinely with the practice of making fresh pasta. “I hate to use a cliché but it is like riding a bicycle,” he explains. “I still had the feel of the dough and I learned to quickly augment what I needed to do to recapture the muscle memory to work and knead with it. I was able to recapture that rhythm and timing which go into making great pasta.”

As for the venture that is set to open in 2009, Adam couldn’t ask for a better vehicle than a starch of simple ingredients that is the carrier for literally a million other flavors, perhaps the single most powerful culinary icon of self-satisfaction, energy sustenance, and happy celebrations. “I have been arduously searching for a venue – a means – with food that satisfies me deeply and to get out the word about the beautiful tastes, and textures of the foods just like the ones found every day in Caputo’s,” he explains. “It is very serendipitous to have this opportunity to be a part of such a special venue.”