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PASTA

Pasta is an amazing food. Just think, it's available everywhere, easy to keep a long time, quick to prepare and in all kinds of different ways, popular with everyone and nourishing and economical. Its origins are very remote in time and some claim it was invented by the Chinese, others by the Neapolitans. But whose really to say. All we can surmize is that Italy is synonymous with past.

What I did discover after some searching is in the early years of the 19th century, a method was discovered in Naples for drying pasta, making it fit for the regular commercial market. This was done by submitting the freshly-made pasta to a combination and alternation of hot and cold air. Since, however, this operation had to be carried out alternately within a very short space of time, particularly appropriate climates were necessary, in which frequent changes of temperature took place during the 24-hour period. After trying time and again, it turned out that perfection was to be found in the area of Torre Annunziata, a suburb of Naples, where the climate changes invariably four times a day. Which explains the success of the pasta manufactured in that city.

Try thumbing through the catalogue of any Italian pasta company and you'll be amazed by the astonishing variety of shapes and names. Only a people gifted with great imagination could come up with names like gnocchi, maccheroni, lasagna tagliatelle, vermicelli, tortellini, cannelloni, ( not to be mistaken with canolli ) ravioli, fettuccine, rotini, capelli d'angelo, conchiglie, levatelli, casatelli, etc. If I'm not mistaken we have 365 different varieties of pasta. Or is that 365 ways to cook pasta... or maybe it's we eat pasta 365 days a year.

As Italians, we realized that in order to eat well it isn't enough to offer something wholesome and nourishing, but the mind must be teased, and that the way to the stomach is through the eyes. I don't know of any other nationalities other than Italians that can consume a bowl of spaghetti quicker than a native. You see there are lots of different ways of eating a bowl of spaghetti. One is to attack it straight on with thrusts of the fork, another is to fiddle around with the tip of the fork, still another to tidy it up neatly then down it by leaps and bounds of wine. I would venture to guess it's not that Italians are fast eaters but letting the spaghetti cool off is something that should absolutely never be done.

Endless the ways of serving it up. Some like it with nothing but garlic and olive oil, others prefer tomato sauce, still others turn up their nose if there isn't a nice meat sauce. As regards seasonings, the district the cook comes from means a lot: basil is essential for Tuscans, oregano for Neapolitans, chili pepper for Romans. For Sicilians saffron is the thing.

And don't come to me with the story that pasta is fattening. Look, for example, at the Sicilian peasants, who eat pasta every day, seasoned with nothing but olive oil, or cheese, or tomatoes, without putting in meat or other animal fats. They are all lean, wiry people with very strong constitutions, unscathed by the hardest labor under the merciless rays of the sun or in the bitter cold of winter. They don't know what fatness means, while as soon as you move up to the well-to-do classes, where the first luxury is to eat a second course of meat or to flavor pasta with ground meat and animal fats, the immediate result is stoutness, obesity and all the serious consequences that settle into the body.

Which reminds us that pasta is, after all, a popular food. For this reason the process of ladling on the sauce, sprinkling the cheese on top and then mixing everything carefully is often carried out at the table. And if a squirt of tomato sauce should end up on a napkin or the shirt of one of the guests, everybody gives a laugh and it isn't a tragedy, like when a chicken, being tackled by a knife, shoots off the plate and seems to take flight as if it still had wings, ending up on the floor or in the lap of some lady's evening gown.