Italy: Pasta

image source http://www.riaumojantysliutai.blogspot.com/

Nowhere else in Italy is the art of making pasta so perfected as in Emilia. http://www.emiliaitaly.com/

Emilia is famous for its pork products like prusciutto, salcicce, mortadelle; for its home-made pasta; for ravioli and tortellini; and for Parmigiano, one of the most widely known among Italian cheese.

An ordinary housewife, in half an hour, can make enough taglierini, a kind of pasta, for a dozen people.

With eggs and flour and water, she makes the dough and kneads it until it is firm enough to roll.

Then with a rolling pin, she presses it out into circular sheets, paper thin. She then cuts it into ribbons, a quarter of an inch in width. In Rome, this pasta will be called fettuccine, and will boiled and drained like spaghetti, and served swimming in butter and grated cheese.

In Emilia, Italian prefer it served with a sause of meat, tomato, herbs and mushrooms.

In Genoa, the same pasta, made in exactly the same way, is served al presto, with an uncooked sauce of garlic, olive oil and fresh basil.