L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, AUGUST 22, 2019 www.italoamericano.org 12 L'Italo-Americano LIFE PEOPLE PLACES HERITAGE T here are great love affairs that permeate the ages: Anthony and Cleopatra, Rhett and Scarlet, Samson and Delilah…Everyone and Pasta. There's something almost magical about digging into a heaping plate of piping hot noo- dles slathered in tangy red sauce…or pudgy pasta squares bulging with velvety ricotta. Besides your mother, pasta might actually have been your first love. How many of us began our eating careers gleefully squishing and slurping our way through a bowl of simple spaghetti? Long, short, skinny, wide, twisted, curled, pinched, tied – pasta in all its glorious forms is ubiquitous to Italy, a food staple that might rank #1 on a list of "What do you think of f when you think of Italy?" And natural- ly, one assumes the first plate of pasta was introduced to humanity eons ago on the beautiful Italian peninsula. But in actuality, the origin of pasta as we know and love it today is a bit convolut- ed…a topic still being noodled over in search of a verifiable timeline. A long-standing myth says that Venetian explorer Marco Polo returned from his adven- tures in China in 1295 with pasta in hand, introducing it to his native countrymen. Undoubtedly, Mr. Polo returned with many culinary delights, but evidence is rather plentiful that pasta already existed in Italy by this time and was already gaining popularity during the 13th century. The 1279 will of a Genoan soldier requests a small basket of maca- roni, "bariscella piena de mac- arone" be left to a beloved, cer- tainly referring to the elevated status of pasta some years before Marco's return. A look back at ancient China is a good beginning for decipher- ing pasta's beginnings. Undoubt- edly, noodles made from rice and other flours have been a staple in China and throughout Asia since antiquity. As expeditions and invasions moved westward, so did the noodles. Although no one knows exactly when the first bowl of chow mein was eaten on Euro- pean soil, speculation and a little academic input suggest that Arabs originally introduced noo- dles to the Mediterranean world in the 8th century. Although these noodles were quite differ- ent from what we consider pasta today, the Arabic contributions of sauces and spices are still an engrained part of southern Italian culture. Some like to claim that pasta existed in Italy long before the 8th century, based on a carved relief found in a 4th century BC Etruscan tomb in Cerveteri. Frozen in time, the relief depicts a flour sack, a tool that could plausibly be used for shaping pasta, a board resembling a con- temporary pasta board, and a knife – all one needs to make pasta. Despite the romantic appeal of this interpretation, archeologists have dismissed this oft-repeated and probable urban myth. Based on other digs and comparable research, conclusions strongly suggest that the relief is simply not a pasta how-to for the after- life. Molecular archeology has also yet to unveil any evidence of durum wheat, the necessary ingredient for durable pasta, in ancient Etruscan, as well as Roman and Greek, ruins. Ameri- can culinary historian Charles Perry has explored pasta's origins and he, too, offers rebuttal: "…no sure Roman reference to a noodle of any kind, tubular or flat, has turned up, and that makes the Etruscan theory even more unlikely..." Though it makes a good story, the evidence begs we toss out the idea that these civi- lizations discussed the day's PAULA REYNOLDS Yesterday, just like today: at work making pasta, sometimes in the Middle Ages Women at work making fresh pasta in Bari's old town Tracing the origins of pasta Continued to page 14

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