Remember when pasta was pretty much spaghetti and elbow macaroni?

Now we have rigatoni and bow-tie and cavatelli and manicotti and fettuccine and paccheri and ... well you get the idea. One website I found listed 35 types of Italian pasta. There are long pastas and short pastas and stretched pastas and filled pastas and soup pastas. And that's just from Italy. So. Much. To. Know.

But for the purposes of this column, let's go back to the basics: Dried or fresh? Do you use cooked or uncooked pasta in recipes? How does your chosen sauce affect your choice of pasta shapes?

Lets start with dried...