I'm seventy this year (you wouldn't think it and I don't feel it), been through a whole kaleidoscope of ups and downs in life (mostly ups, though still to win the lottery) and I'd like to mainly enjoy what I have left if I can and if my bad back will allow. Very high on my list of indispensable aids in that quest is eating pasta dishes. I can't cook complex things with lots of spices and other exotic ingredients without cocking it up. But I can cook twenty or thirty pasta dishes to Shaw-perfection (might not be to yours) and the vast majority are quick, simple and full of those nutrients that we westerners living in miserable, damp climates in Northern Europe enviously link to "the Mediterranean diet." I like to think that I'm respectful of the Italian heritage of this cuisine (though I doubt whether Italians would care a jot). It's extra virgin olive oil, fresh herbs (never dried basil), sliced garlic (never minced up), no mixing garlic and onion in the same dish, no cheese on fish dishes... and, most crucially, the pasta cooked spot-on al dente. It took me years to be able to confidently get that right every time.

So I can't listen to advocates of letting pasta go cold and warming it back up again. I'd rather hack off the family jewels with a rusty machete. Cold spuds and rice are very useful ingredients, and I use them a lot, but decidedly not because they contain "resistant starch." I don't give a damn. I've been through life hearing various gurus condemning all manner of things that, up to that point, I've been enjoying. So I'm not listening to this guff about my perfectly al dente pasta giving me a sugar rush or leaving me feel hungry. I've never eaten pasta that has ever resulted in those feelings, and something very primitive and deep inside me tells me that it's decent and healthy eating. I'll listen to the science when it comes along (I might even read Helen's links and come to regret this post, at least in parts, though I'm serially averse to reading uncommented-on, unannotated links in what's supposed to be a discussion forum).

In m'humble!