#radiatori

Radiatori - Temporary Score: 11

Description: shaped like radiators. you know, there are some pastas that have very Italian names, and some pastas that have very esoteric names, and then there are some pastas that are called "radiator pasta" because they look like raditors. i love language. also pasta. also a lot of americans aren't going to know what a radiator looks like, so fam, check the picture above: radiators look like pasta.

First Take Points: 5 - oh it's here, it's here, i finally get to talk about my Quatro Queso Dos Pastas dish! (she says as if somebody was preventing her from doing so before.) i've been dying to make mac n cheese for the bulk of 2025, but not with mac(aroni) and with (muchmore)cheese; i also, at a certain point in the year, got into a bit of a pasta rut (you may have noticed and silently judged the upsetting number of pastas that were consumed "in red sauce"); also also the number of remaining pasta shapes to be consumed and scored was starting to outnumber the weeks left in the year, to an alarming degree, and i alighted upon the oh so elegant solution of throwing multiple pasta shapes into a cheesy pasta dish. but then i was like, i can't have twice the pasta to once the cheese? so i x4ed the cheese. Quatro Queso. Dos Pastas. MAGIC.

radiatori are MADE FOR MELTY CHEESE. also, i should dock myself some points because i got really lazy about the roux and as a result the end product never quite thickened the way it was supposed to, but that is ENTIRELY the fault of the chef, and not the pasta shape, so max points. it still ended up being ooey gooey just lovely. little radiators are large enough to stand up to the cook without going completely mushy, but still small enough to get a couple on your fork with cheese strings and hidden pockets of cheese in the back and holy crap i'm so hungry for QQDP right now...

the cheeses, if you are interested, were: smoked gouda, parm, gruyere, and fontina.

Remix Bonus Points: 5 - if it holds cheese, it will hold red sauce. (i'm saying this with a Dodgeball inflection. iykyk.)

Amusement Points: 2 - they are cute and all but... i just don't think radiators are all that amusing? now: if you built a functioning radiator out of pasta? that is some max points amusement right there.

Annoyance Deductions: -1 - i'm annoyed at how unamused i am.

Alternative Uses: altho my brain typically jumps to "mouse" when i get to this part, these are really quite small, so, scale down, if you will: