ITALY OF PASTA

Pasta, the queen on your table

Pasta: a typical Italian product exported all over the world, a National pride, celebrated even in literature since the XVIth century when “maccheroni” gave the name to a type of poetry! A true style, ascribed to Teofilo Folengo from Mantua (1491-1544), the author of “Maccheronee”.

The first written evidence about the production of dried pasta goes back to 1154 and is taken from the “book for the ones who enjoy getting around the world”(Libro per chi si diletta a girare il mondo) written by the geographer Al Idrisi for Ruggero II of Siciliy. If you go back in thousands of years time you’ll discover that “lasagna” spread across the centuries in the whole Roman Empire. But, be careful, there are many different types of pasta.
In the past, pasta was made from durum wheat flour and it was commonly prepared in the South of Italy and it was difficult to find it in the centre-north of Italy since the climate was colder and more humid and it was better for the cultivation of tender wheat. Even today, going from the South to the North of Italy, the culture of pasta is featured by a higher use of tender or durum wheat and from Emilia Romagna towards the North the dough made of flour and eggs is the protagonist. Fresh, dried, with eggs, pasta is the first Italian dish par excellence and there is a wide range of dried pasta that makes almost 80% of the whole consumption, produced by using durum wheat’s bran.
If appetite comes from eating, then you must taste the icons of the Italian table, a triumph of spaghetti, fusilli, maccheroni, pennette, orecchiette, farfalle, rigatoni, fettuccine, pappardelle, agnolotti, tortelli, tortellini, ravioli and… the list  is very long.
Each region and even each town is featured by thousands of dishes that are prepared according to a huge range of recipes that are very often rooted in the past and are renewed with a lot of imagination and mastery. This characteristic abounds in Italy.

Did you know that…
The world “spaghetti” was entered in the “dictionary of Italian language” by Niccolò Tommaseo and Bernardo Bellini for the first time in 1819; at the entry “spago” there is the phrase “minestra di spaghetti” (soup of spaghetti): pasta as big as a little string, but long!

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