I have never had the pleasure of eating Mario's food but one time I hit a beautiful drive into the woods at an upstate golf course and who should be hacking out in the other direction but a shorts wearing redheaded fellow who had the same problem as me.

I am happy to see that Batali salts his pasta water, as I do. This is a matter of some controversy in my home kitchen.

I used to have a major pasta maker as a PR client (name rhymes with "just had a huge globe-spanning PR brain fart") and regularly interviewed their in-house chefs for web features etc. The news from that quarter: The water you use to cook pasta "should taste like the sea."

Also: No oil in the water. No no no.

2) The water should taste like the sea. That is fact if you are cooking like an Italian. Anything else is something else. There is no bending in this area.

No oil, NO NO.