Dried Pasta

Most people have eaten pasta, cooked pasta, seen pasta, or at least know what pasta is. To many, pasta is just noodles that you boil in water for about 12-15 minutes and throw some red or white sauce on top of. Sometimes you might add your favorite veggies or meats to the dish. Well, pasta is actually quite a versatile food that has a long history and many possibilities for cooking and serving it.

Plain and simple, pasta is food. It is made from kneading together flour from specific grains with water or eggs, or both. Then the dough-like substance is pressed, formed, or cut into various shapes. Pasta can come fresh or dried. You can even make your own fresh pasta to cook! Whether it is fresh or dried, pasta is then boiled until it is tender, but be careful not to boil it too long or it will get mushy. If you have ever had pasta before you can simply taste it to see if the texture is right or if it needs to cook a little longer. Another old method of checking the progress of your cooking pasta is to throw a piece against the wall and if it sticks, it’s ready. Read the rest…

Take a pasta quiz at http://quiz.ivillage.com/food/tests/pasta.htm

There are over 600 different shapes of pasta in the world.

Mark your calendar - October 25^th is World Pasta Day!

The Pope laid out standards for the quality of pasta in the 13^th century.

It has been said that pasta was brought to the United States by Thomas Jefferson after he tasted a pasta dish while in France and loved it. When he returned to the United States he apparently ordered macaroni by the crate and bought himself a pasta making machine.

Spaghetto is the singular form of spaghetti. Pasta literally means paste in the Italian language. So if you are eating just one piece you can say, “I am eating a spaghetto.”

Gravy is not just a brown, meat based sauce to throw on beef, pork, or poultry. It is also a term sometimes used by Italians for a tomato sauce that is prepared by simmering it for a long time.

For the most part, Americans are the only people who use a fork with a spoon to twirl and eat their spaghetti. Most other cultures simply use a fork and twirl it against the dish. Read the rest…

Yes, Chinese people have been consuming pasta for a very long time. Since 2000 BCE in fact. And you may have heard of the legend where Marco Polo brought pasta to Italy from China long ago but that really is no more than a legend or tale. In other words, it is not true! A Greek physician produced some works in the 2nd century CE that told of something he called itrion. Itrion was made from water and flour and according to records of the Jerusalem Talmud, it was a kind of boiled dough. Sound like pasta yet?

Well, Isho bar Ali was a 9th century Syrian physician and he developed a dictionary that defined itriyya (formerly itrion). It said that the substance was made with semolina and formed into string-like pasta shapes that were dried out before being cooked. Now it should sound like the pasta we know today.