Last week I went to Trader Joe’s to acquire provisions for my stay in Ohio. One of the supplies I need to get is pasta, specifically, spaghetti, so I can make delightful spaghetti with lemon and basil. This Trader Joe’s is of course laid out a little bit different from my local one, so it takes me a couple of tries to locate the pasta-containing aisle. Once there, I see the packages of long pasta (yum), the price tag ($0.99), and toss it in my basket (success). It is only once I get home and start preparing it that I notice the recommended cooking time is a mere three minutes. “Three minutes is incredibly short for spaghetti,” I say to myself. That would be because it was not, in fact, spaghetti, but capellini, its diminutive cousin. One might argue that because “angel hair” pasta it is also made of semolina, it tastes the same; one would also be grossly underestimating the significance of mouthfeel in the flavor palette.
What makes this all the more embarrassing is that this is not the first time I have been punked by capellini, also at Trader Joe’s. Are they in this together?! Who knows! What I do know is that fool me once…twice…well, I won’t get fooled again.