Striped Garganelli

It's almost the end of January, and neither of us has written up our top 10 food memories from last year (actually not sure either of us has nailed down a top 10 list either), but in order to get back into the practice of writing, we're diving back into our Trader Joe's reviews.

TJ's came out with this striped garganelli pasta, part of their organic Italian artisan pasta line, back in December, featuring pink and white striped tube-shaped pasta for the holidays. We'd had good luck with some other pasta in the artisan line, so we were hoping that these festive-looking shapes would continue the trend. Colored pasta is also just really fun to eat! Here, the pink color came from beet root powder, and the only other ingredients in the pasta were the organic durum wheat semolina (sourced from Puglia, Italy) and water, very simple with nothing unnecessary added.

The package said to boil the pasta for 14-15 minutes, which seemed kind of long for us, so we just tried to cook it until it seemed al dente. (Don't remember exactly how long that was.) Unfortunately, this one seemed to cook unevenly, reminding us of our experience with the winter snowflake pasta, except in this case, the issue was with each individual piece. The folded-over part of the pasta and the rest of the tube shape didn't match in texture the way we were hoping they would, with the folded-over part a little too chewy when the rest was al dente, or the folded-over part being just right with the rest of the piece being too soft, but apparently that was the intention. Reading the TJ's blog after we made it (probably should have checked before), they talked about how the folded-over center would be al dente while the ends would be soft like that was a feature of this pasta shape. Maybe we would have felt differently about the texture if we had had those expectations, but hard to determine in retrospect. It was definitely edible, but not the uniform al dente texture that we were hoping for.

We mixed the pasta with some garlic marinara sauce, meatballs, and mushrooms, and when spooning it into the bowl, you couldn't see the stripes at all. Removing the sauce, they were still there but much lighter and less pink, so if color is important, a non-tomato-based sauce would probably be a better fit. The pink stripes were a nice novelty for the holidays, but just that. The pasta served its purpose as a good vehicle for the sauce, but in the end, it didn't live up to some of the other pasta shapes we've tried before from TJ's.

Buy again? Probably not, since texture is important to us, and we've had better luck with other pasta shapes before.