I can eat pasta baked, boiled, sauced or tossed. Some of my favourites are the carbonara and lasagna. When I was younger, I was accustomed to eat at birthday parties that served tomato based spaghetti and because parties and pasta usually went together, I probably had a positive association of my emotions to pasta. I went through my childhood eating the famous jolly spaghetti from Jollibee as my favourite and from there, my taste preference matured from only enjoying jolly spaghetti to enjoying all kinds of pastas.
The most famous variety of pasta in Philippine urban areas is the long pasta, spaghetti and the short pasta, macaroni usually served in fast food places and parties with tomato based sauce or white cream sauce. There are different kinds of pastas; special pasta, egg pasta, diet pasta, fresh pasta, wholemeal pasta, durum wheat pasta, and a whole lot more. Both spaghetti and macaroni we are accustomed to eating are usually made of durum wheat flour which is a natural element that tightly holds the pasta together and is high in protein content. Another thing to take note of is that we usually prepare our modern day pasta boiled and drenched with sauce and eat it using forks, but this was not evident in the early development of pasta. In earlier times pasta was usually fried or grilled and eaten using bare hands either plainly or with sprinkled cheese. In fact, it was found in the 1st century writing by the Roman poet, Horace, that there was a certain food that was described as fried, fine sheets of dough called lagana which might have been the ancestor of our present day lasagna. Boiling pasta can actually be traced back as a devise of the Arabs so they can carry along with them dry pasta and reconstitute it into hot meals, while drenching it with sauce was introduced centuries much later.
Making pasta can be a very tedious process. Even in earlier times, pasta making was labour intensive; the Sicilian term “macarone” meaning making dough forcefully was used to actually depict the hard labour. Pasta can be done home-made or in an industrial scale.
A basic process in making pasta is mixing and kneading the flour with warm until the dough gets lumpy, then rolling out air bubbles and excess water to flatten the dough, pasteurizing it and finally cutting it into its particular shape. After all these is the vital part, drying the dough that can last for hours depending on its shape, because this can determine how easy the pasta will spoil or break. Before the invention of mechanical drying, the first large-scale production of pasta was in the early 1500s during the industrial revolution in Naples, Italy because the fluctuating temperature of site was suitable for the drying needs of pasta. This kind of production then enabled pasta to have a longer shelf life and can take credit for bringing Naples out of economic depression.
But, Italy was not the only country to benefit from the invention of pasta. Though there are numerous variations of pasta dough mixtures, pasta is generally composed of simple yet important ingredients: flour (usually durum wheat flour), salt, and usually eggs. This might be one of the reasons why pasta had become favoured, because its components were not really hard to find. Pasta then had become one of the staple foods for the poor and the rich alike throughout centuries when meat and other fresh produce have become expensive or scarce.
Like many other foods, pasta has a long and confusing history. Contrary to popular belief, pasta was not introduced to Italy by China via Marco Polo; neither did it originate from Italy although they might have been the first to serve pasta as a main dish. There really is no clear origin of pasta since a good number of locations around the globe seemed to have discovered and use it, without foreign influence. Even today, different countries use different ways to cook and serve their pasta.
But regardless of different forms, different processes of making, or even different ways of eating pasta, I think pasta is one of the dishes that carries on the adage that food is a global language. Although we know pasta only by the dishes familiar to us as presented by our location, we all agree to enjoy the moulded dough as a scrumptious delicacy.
The most famous variety of pasta in Philippine urban areas is the long pasta, spaghetti and the short pasta, macaroni usually served in fast food places and parties with tomato based sauce or white cream sauce. There are different kinds of pastas; special pasta, egg pasta, diet pasta, fresh pasta, wholemeal pasta, durum wheat pasta, and a whole lot more. Both spaghetti and macaroni we are accustomed to eating are usually made of durum wheat flour which is a natural element that tightly holds the pasta together and is high in protein content. Another thing to take note of is that we usually prepare our modern day pasta boiled and drenched with sauce and eat it using forks, but this was not evident in the early development of pasta. In earlier times pasta was usually fried or grilled and eaten using bare hands either plainly or with sprinkled cheese. In fact, it was found in the 1st century writing by the Roman poet, Horace, that there was a certain food that was described as fried, fine sheets of dough called lagana which might have been the ancestor of our present day lasagna. Boiling pasta can actually be traced back as a devise of the Arabs so they can carry along with them dry pasta and reconstitute it into hot meals, while drenching it with sauce was introduced centuries much later.
Making pasta can be a very tedious process. Even in earlier times, pasta making was labour intensive; the Sicilian term “macarone” meaning making dough forcefully was used to actually depict the hard labour. Pasta can be done home-made or in an industrial scale.
A basic process in making pasta is mixing and kneading the flour with warm until the dough gets lumpy, then rolling out air bubbles and excess water to flatten the dough, pasteurizing it and finally cutting it into its particular shape. After all these is the vital part, drying the dough that can last for hours depending on its shape, because this can determine how easy the pasta will spoil or break. Before the invention of mechanical drying, the first large-scale production of pasta was in the early 1500s during the industrial revolution in Naples, Italy because the fluctuating temperature of site was suitable for the drying needs of pasta. This kind of production then enabled pasta to have a longer shelf life and can take credit for bringing Naples out of economic depression.
But, Italy was not the only country to benefit from the invention of pasta. Though there are numerous variations of pasta dough mixtures, pasta is generally composed of simple yet important ingredients: flour (usually durum wheat flour), salt, and usually eggs. This might be one of the reasons why pasta had become favoured, because its components were not really hard to find. Pasta then had become one of the staple foods for the poor and the rich alike throughout centuries when meat and other fresh produce have become expensive or scarce.
Like many other foods, pasta has a long and confusing history. Contrary to popular belief, pasta was not introduced to Italy by China via Marco Polo; neither did it originate from Italy although they might have been the first to serve pasta as a main dish. There really is no clear origin of pasta since a good number of locations around the globe seemed to have discovered and use it, without foreign influence. Even today, different countries use different ways to cook and serve their pasta.
But regardless of different forms, different processes of making, or even different ways of eating pasta, I think pasta is one of the dishes that carries on the adage that food is a global language. Although we know pasta only by the dishes familiar to us as presented by our location, we all agree to enjoy the moulded dough as a scrumptious delicacy.
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