asta in its innumerable forms and uses is inextricably woven into the fabric of Italian life. This food product has played a vital role in the country’s diet (and imagination) at least since around 1299 when Marco Polo was apparently released from wartime captivity in Genoa and the story of his travels, written with the collaboration of Rustichello of Pisa, began to circulate. In the extant texts, Polo says he saw the Chinese eating vermicelli. He does not explain what vermicelli is, apparently assuming his readers would know what he meant. He does not say he brought any pasta back with him from the East and he gives no recipes for the making of pasta or information on how it should be cooked and served.
Some experts argue that the Arabs introduced pasta in southern Sicily around the beginning of the second millennium. Others say the Etruscans were making and consuming some types of pasta more than a thousand years earlier. No doubt pasta was “invented” numerous times in many places but the Italians have done more than most peoples to develop and exploit it. In general, Italian pasta is made from wheat, although buckwheat (grano saraceno) is extensively used in Lombardy’s Valtellina and other regions of northern Italy.
In the past, each area of the country had its own types of pasta and its own ways of preparing them. Modern transportation systems have expanded distribution so that specialties of one area have spread to others or throughout Italy. Southern Italy was (and in general still is) the stronghold of dried pastas made from hard (durum) wheat. The north favored fresh and often stuffed pastas made with soft wheat or a mixture of the two types. Eggs were normally added to fresh but not to dried pastas.
Dried pastas once dominated the export trade because they could be stored for extended periods. Due to development of vacuum packaging, fresh Italian pastas are now widely available on foreign markets. Pasta is a highly nutritious food product and its consumption is often recommended to athletes as part of a high-carbohydrate diet.
