The ability to store pasta for long periods along with its versatility made it an instant favorite throughout the country and, eventually, the world. Once the idea of noodles came to Italy, the locals refined the production process by using durum wheat, water, and sometimes egg to create a type of noodle with an almost unlimited shelf life. While Marco Polo is popularly credited with bringing pasta to Italy from his travels, it is much more likely that the dish arrived long before he was born via nomadic Arabs, who often traded between Asia and Europe. Lasagne is used in oven-baked dishes with the most well known dish being lasagne al forno, which likely comprises of a beef or pork ragu, layered between layers of lasagne and béchamel sauce, topped with cheese. Most likely, the idea for pasta came from Asia, where local cultures had been making and consuming noodles for thousands of years. Contrary to popular belief, lasagne is the name of the thin sheets of pasta that make up a dish, rather than the dish itself. This is because this popular food has long been eaten by the commoners as well as the royals, meaning there was never any real need to document its use or origin. Don’t even bother buying it dried.Pasta, which is a term that refers specifically to noodles traditionally produced in Italy, has a bit of a muddled history. Few sauces are deserving of this pasta, but regional favorites include butter and sage, butter and porcini, or a light ragù made out of nutty salsiccia di Bra, paired with a big glass of the region’s best Barbaresco or Barolo. Fettuccine is a long, flat, tape-like pasta thats popular in Roman and Tuscan cuisine. The best tajarin will be incredibly soft and so paper thin that the noodles are practically see-through. Many Piemontese restaurants still make the pasta like so others may lower the egg-to-flour ratio for cost purposes, but, regardless, tajarin is by far the eggiest pasta on this list. Historically, Piedmont was a wealthy region, and the number of egg yolks in the pasta was a flex, creating a dough as rich as the aristocrats who ate it. The bright yellow color of the noodles is from the pasta’s astronomically high egg content–40 yolks per kilo of flour, to be exact. The shape–and dialectal pronunciation of tagliolini–hails from the rolling, Barolo-producing hills of Piedmont’s Langhe region. Tajarin – Although the name might sound foreign to you–and we can understand why, given the Italian alphabet doesn’t technically have a “j”–you’ve likely had this shape of pasta under the guise of tagliolini. You can find this pasta fresh or dried, and the frilled edges are perfect for catching bits of tomato sauce, either in a simple pomodoro or alla norma. Rotelle comes from the Italian word for small wheel and is best known in the U.S. The moniker could also refer to the floppy hats worn by the Florentine jesters of the 16th century, which go by the same name. Legend has it that the squiggly shape was developed in Florence after an attempted assassination of the Medici family: shrieking chickens saved the nobles when the killers entered through the barn. Below, ten of our favorite underrated pasta shapes that deserve greater recognition.Ĭreste di Gallo – This short, curved, crescent pasta has a ruffled edge that resembles a rooster’s crest, or coxcomb, from which the shape derives its name. Next time you don’t know what to cook for dinner or which primi to order, go for something out of the ordinary. Although some pasta sauces have strict sauce pairings–you’ll never see us putting cime di rape on anything other than orecchiette, or vongole on anything besides spaghetti–others, like amatriciana, are perfectly delicious whether with bucatini or mezze maniche. Sounds like a challenge we’d happily sign up for. What a disgrace when it’s believed that there are over 350 varieties of pasta in Italy! That means we could basically eat a different pasta shape everyday for an entire year. Although we live in the motherland of pasta, we still find ourselves presented with the same handful of options, missing out on the true plethora of available squiggles and twists both on menus and in grocery stores in Italy and abroad. Everyone knows this, and yet few dare venture past the same ole varieties that are constantly in the spotlight: tagliatelle, spaghetti, rigatoni, tortellini, ravioli, and the likes. We’ve got a lot of secrets here at Italy Segreta, but the fact that pasta is exceptional certainly isn’t one of them.
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