SC - Fideos (Spanish noodles)

[ChannonM@aol.com]

Mordonna22 at aol.com wrote:
> 
> So, if there is a Roman recipe for pasta, how could there be Italian recipes
> pre-dating Pasta??

Well, technically, there could have been pasta before Rome, and probably
was, but I get your drift.

I believe Cato's De Re Agricultura contains recipes for stacked
structures along the lines of lasagna under the basic heading of tracta
(or some similar term; it's too early in the morning: actually a great
gig, I don't have to be responsible for anything I say before I'm
awake). I remember there being an article on this in one of the fairly
recent Petits Propos Culinaires.

One reason, perhaps, for the confusion on Roman and medieval pasta is
that modern milling techniques aren't that old, perhaps 18th century,
and the kind of fine pasta now made industrially from hard wheats (not
to mention extruded spaghetti) wouldn't have been possible in period.
Whether that means the Italian pasta of earlier ages was coarse and
granular, and somewhat gnocchi-like, or whether it was similar to the
kind of noodles we can easily make at home with AP flour (plain flour to
British-speakers) is uncertain. My suspicion is the former, because some
medieval recipes tend to talk about boiling pasta in good broth for an
hour (eeeeeee-ewwwww!) which would create a sort of brothy, soplike
pudding-ey mass.

Am I imagining things or did we just have this discussion a week or so ago?

One more thing: it just occurred to me that perhaps what was meant was a
study of Italian cuisine before the introduction of the tomato, for
which there are a bazillion primary sources full of recipes. Well,
plenty of them, anyway. 
 
Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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