An a-Z of Pasta

Who better to mirror the changing shape of a country and society than a newly industrialized industry that made shapes. I’d love to travel back in time and eavesdrop on the conversation about which shape best honoured a newborn princess or a victory abroad, how best to extrude a car radiator, wheel, aeroplane propeller or flying saucer.

Historians suggest the first written source of something like a ravioli was in the Liber de Coquina, ‘The book of cooking/cookery’, maybe the oldest medieval cookbook, dated around 1285–1304. Within its appendix is a study of Arab gastronomy from 1100 noting a sambusaj, a triangle of pasta filled with ground meat. This date coincides with the end o

And it continues, as pasta makers invest in 3D printers which allow them to sculpt forms that could never be made by hand or mechanical extrusion. Every year the pasta maker Barilla holds a competition to design a new shape and receives hundreds of entries, especially from children. Barilla also holds the pasta world championships, inviting 14 youn

I now realize that strong opinions about ragù, or any dish for that matter, are expressions of nostalgia. That repeating them is almost as comforting as eating the dish because it’s another way of saying this is the way I know this is and how I hope it will stay.

It is the way they pleat and fold that makes them so satisfying. First on the plate and then again in your mouth. Pappardelle are typical of all the central and central-northern Italian regions, each one boasting a slightly different width, anything from 2.5 to 6cm. The Tuscans gave it the name; it comes from pappare, the colloquial, to eat. Fresh

Penne is a doubly good sauce collector, both on its ridges, and – like a dip pen collecting ink – in its slanted tip.

While classic ridged penne are the widely consumed favourites, and Italy’s second most sold shape, there are penne variations. Bigger pennoni (my favourite of the family), and in descending order of size siblings, pennette, pennine and pennettine, also mezze penne, half sized, which are ideal with peas, lemon and mascarpone.

They take their name from the onomatopoeic paccarià, Neapolitan for ‘to slap’. Which is exactly what they do when cooked, like soft sacs, they slap and flap when you toss them in the sauce, then again in your mouth. Along with rigatoni, paccheri are my preferred shape, and one of the best ways to understand good quality pasta, its porous surface, s

Also a 3kg bag of archetti, little curved remnants, reminders that before it was cut spaghetti hung over a stick.