No matter how unimpeachable whole-wheat pasta is in terms of nutritional cred, I’ve always found it off-putting.
Sure, it has more fiber and whole-grain nutrition. But it always struck me as rather spineless and dull. And as someone whose culinary credo is that food can be scrumptious and healthy, I wasn’t about to eat whole-wheat pasta for its nutritional benefits alone.
Happily, several brands recently have developed very respectable lines of 100 percent whole-wheat pasta. If you haven’t lately, you might want to taste a few of them to decide which is your favorite.
Once you’ve settled on a winner, cook it the way I suggest in this recipe, which is to finish cooking the pasta in the sauce. This produces a more flavorful dish than the more traditional method — cooking the sauce and pasta separately, then combining them only at the last minute. Plenty tasty, but the flavors never marry.