The Joy of Pasta

Pasta can be considered the universal food. It is made from eggs, flour, and salt. It can be made in any number of shapes. It can be served hot or cold and with any of a variety of sauces and ingredients. While pasta is filled with complex carbohydrates, it can be as healthy or as decadent as one wishes, depending on what one serves on it.

A History of Pasta

Marco Polo, the great Venetian explorer, is said to have introduced pasta to Italy from China. This is a pleasant, romantic story without much basis in fact.  There is some evidence that a form of pasta was known to the ancient Greeks and Romans. The 1st Century AD Roman writer Apicius describes a kind of pasta, roasted in an oven like pizza dough,called “lagana” which was used to layer meat and fish and sounds suspiciously like modern lasagna. Some scholars believe that the first use of pasta in the west dates back as far as the Etruscans, based on carvings on ancient tombs,but this theory is in dispute.

Pasta cooked by boiling seems to have been introduced to Sicily by Arab conquerors. The Arabs used dried pasta as a portable stable, since it preserved very well. The Italians developed the idea of cooking and eating fresh pasta, using it with sauces, and baking it as lasagna. Around the year 1000, we have the first documented recipe for pasta in the book "De arte Coquinaria per vermicelli e macaroni siciliani" or “The Art of Cooking Sicilian macaroni and Vermicelli” written by Martino Corno, chef to the powerful Patriarch of Aquileia. In 1279, a Genoese soldier listed as part of his estate 'unabariscella plena de macaronis' or a basket of macaroni.

Of course, Marco Polo did encounter a form of pasta in China. The Chinese had been eating it since at least 3000 BC. Noodles, some made with rice rather than wheat, are a staple of eastern cuisine even today.

Pasta spread in popularity in the 14^th and 15^th Centuries, as it was simple to make and, in dried form, very portable. It could be stored on ships, such as the ones that set sail to explore the New World. Around this time, various new shapes of pasta are mentioned in the records of Dominican monasteries in Italy.