How to eat spaghetti?

How do you eat spaghetti?
The great Alberto Sordi … this time we forgive him?

Morbi vitae purus dictum, ultrices tellus in, gravida lectus.

Let’s be honest, seeing this image makes us smile and sincerely makes us also have a certain appetite, but do we really want to forgive our national Albertone for how he eats his spaghetti? I’d say no. We can only forgive the fact that anyone who sees Spaghettion the menu of a ceremony or, or an elegant dinner, gets a little nervous about having to approach a dish that presents some difficulties. First of all, remember that etiquette is above all the welcome and well-being of our guests, and therefore, if we can, we avoid serving spaghetti. Stories from England tell us that even Queen Elizabeth is intimidated by spaghetti so much that she avoids them because she doesn’t want to get dirty and look clumsy while fumbling with a fork.

We Italians love spaghetti and therefore we must necessarily face them with class and simplicity without being overwhelmed by fears of various sketches and therefore catastrophic spots in our elegant clothes.

So, let’s start with the precautions that are the basis of our daily way of eating, categorically avoiding those that are methods that are not part of our traditions:

Helping yourself with your hands is a typical practice of cultures such as India; for us it is different and the reason is that this would force us to frequently wipe our hands in the napkin soiling it or, worse, get to wipe our fingers by licking them.
Eating curves on the plate for fear of getting dirty.
Use the spoon in an attempt to form perfect Bocconi.
Help yourself with the knife by cutting the spaghetti.
Remember to put the bite in your mouth, without “sucking”, with musical noises, the hanging strands of pasta.

The good rule is that the fork stops 2 or 3 spaghetti and then rolls them clockwise to form a perfect skein to bring it to the mouth.

To make these bites perfect, you NEVER have to break the spaghetti when you put it in the pot to cook it, and this applies to any “long” pasta; remember: it is a sacrilege, and certainly increase the difficulty of those who would like to roll it but cannot succeed because of its reduced size.

It is important to be careful not to make skeins with dangling or shapeless threads.

The fork must be tiltedand never vertical to the plate. What could help is to serve spaghetti, like all first courses, in soup plates; these can be very useful and help us form perfect skeins but, unfortunately, the atrocious fashion of serving everything on flat plates has complicated our lives, as happens with many starred chefs who think more of surprising us than welcoming us. As perfect hosts, if you really want to offer a plate of spaghetti, which is at least a bottom dish. As soon as we finish eating, let’s remember to put the fork in a vertical position to our body to warn those who have to remove the plate that we have finished eating.