Italian pasta is one of the most common dishes all around the world. Probably because it is a simple dish, made of flour and water!
The first reference of pasta we have tell us of a big "gnocco" (dumpling), that was put under the sun to dry, lasting more than 2 hours to be cooked!
Lately people began to divide it in smaller pieces that could be cooked in less time.
At the beginning it was like bread. The only difference was the yeast. If added it became bread, if not, it became pasta.
Spaghetti were born in Naples, Italy, and as there were yet no cutlery, they were caught with fingers, raised and then introduced into the mouth.
As time passed by, it became easier to make it in different shapes and ways, even if the main recipe is always flour and water, sometimes with eggs added.
There are some ancient recipes, as
fregola sarda
, that would be difficult to make as it comes from the Arabians who colonized Sardinia. This kind of pasta was done putting the wheat on a table and then spurting it with water and quickly touching them with fingers. Today it can be found in markets, but it is really difficult to be done at home.
There's another typical pasta from Sardinia called
malloreddus.
It used to be done making a long piece of pasta and then cutting it with the thumbs against a grater to give it that particular shape. Some people still do it at home. I looked over the Internet and found it
in this site.
The main pasta recipe is quite the same for all. Often the difference is its shape, or in how much water we put in it, depending on what we want to do. If we want to make tagliatelle we need less water than ravioli pasta.
Most of the time, when we talk about pasta recipe we mean not the pasta, but its seasoning. Here we really have a lot of choices. And it is interesting to take a look at our
tips
, because some pasta is more likely for some seasoning and so on.
