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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tleilaxu" data-source="post: 502716" data-attributes="member: 1289">yet another tangentHISTORY OF PASTAThe long history of pasta is told in many different versions. The once commonly held belief that Marco Polo first brought pasta to Italy from China in 1298 has been proven false by a better documented story. The first written documentation of pasta in mainland Europe came from the city archives of Genoa. Written in 1279, a listing of the assets of a dead man's estate included a basket full of macaroni. Because it was listed in his possessions, we assume that the pasta was considered a durable item and therefore must have been dried.Printed references to foods that seem to be a form of pasta have been found in Europe dating back to the Ninth century, and in the Middle East back as far back as the Fourth century. The vagary of written records arises from the fact that pasta was traditionally a food of the commoners, most of whom couldn't write in ancient times. Also, the two essential ingredients in pasta, flour and water, were used to make many other foods, including bread and porridge. Whatever the origin of this staple food, the notion that fresh pasta is somehow more authentic is apparently false, as the history of dry pasta is well documented.The term pasta, however, does not have such a long history. Many of the oldest references to this boiled flour-and-water product refer to it as macaroni, regardless of whether the pasta was tubular or not. The word macaroni is still used by many Italians when speaking about pasta in any of its many shapes. Pasta in Italy traditionally referred to a dough or a paste. In the United States, pasta became the preferred term after World War II. Today, the word pasta is a universal term for this basic yet glorious food.Italians have an innate knack for matching the multitude of different pasta shapes with appropriate sauces. This talent is not so universal and we Americans are just beginning to learn such pairings as we become more familiar with the world of pasta.<a href="http://www.igourmet.com/library/pasta/st_pastahistory.asp" target="_blank">http://www.igourmet.com/library/pasta/st_pastahistory.asp</a>Whenever I mention that I write on the history of food, someone is bound to ask "When was pasta invented?" For Europe, that's a tricky question to answer. For China, though, we have a pretty good idea: about 300 BC. We have it on the authority of Shu Hsi, an official editor of ancient texts and one of the most learned men of China. A pasta enthusiast, in about 300 AD he composed a poem "A Rhapsody on Pasta." Although today we don't think of poems as culinary reference works, they were back then. Shu Hsi's rhapsody was effectively a pasta encyclopedia. The Chinese cuisine of 300 BC was not one of rice and fish and stir fries. That did not emerge until well over a millennium later. Instead the Chinese dined on rich stews of meat and vegetables accompanied by fluffy grains of millet that they had steamed over the stew. They had little use for the foreign cereal, wheat, which many centuries earlier had been brought to China by travelers from the west. For them, it was food for the miserably poor or as a last resort when stores were running low. For us, who relish wheat bread and pasta, and relegate tiny, round millet seeds to the birds, this seems strange. We have to remember, though, that the Chinese steamed or boiled wheat berries just like they steamed or boiled millet. Whereas this makes millet light and flavorful (it was the forerunner of polenta in Italy, after all, and is still worth trying), wheat berries stay chewy and slightly bitter. What changed this was the grindstone. Around the 3rd century BC, when the RomanEmpire began trading with the Chinese Han Empire in China, merchants and nomads carried the grindstone from oasis to oasis along the Silk Roads. For the first time, the Chinese began grinding wheat into flour instead of cooking it whole. They mixed the flour with water to make a dough. Instead of slapping the dough on a hot surface or into a beehive oven to make flat bread sand leavened breads, as had been done in the Middle East and Mediterranean for millennia, they continued steaming and boiling. They made noodles, dumplings, thin pancakes, stuffed buns, and steamed breads, calling them all `ping.' Ping, of course, was equivalent to our pasta, and it was as delicious as boiled wheat had been dull. Wheat hop scotched over millet in the social scale and became the grain of the Emperor and his court. <a href="http://www.cheftalk.com/HTML/Education/past_articles/china_noodle.html" target="_blank">http://www.cheftalk.com/HTML/Education/past_articles/china_noodle.html</a>CONCLUSION: 9th century vs. 3rd century BC;  CHINA WINS!</blockquote>

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