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Pasta in its various avatars has been around forever.It is claimed that Marco Polo brought back the recipe from China, but there are references in Roman times to pasta, the Etruscans are credited with being the inventors of pasta in its most popular form which is macaroni. Whatever its origins it has now become a universal food, and the cereals from which it is made are legion, wheat, rice, buckwheat and millet are some of the grains used in making the pasta.The standard wheat though is the durum wheat as that has sufficient gluten to give the pasta texture.

If there is any dichotomy, it is between the Italian pastas and the Asian noodles, although thanks to globalisation you find Italians eating noodles and Japanese eating spaghetti.

Although I enjoy noodles, particularly Japanese soba noodles, made from buckwheat flour, it is the Italian pasta which is my first love. There is sufficient variety of shapes, sizes, and dare I say sauces or to use the proper term ragu, to ensure that ones appetite is never jaded.

Italians tend to be rather dogmatic about their pasta.The traditionalists insist that pasta is always about pasta, never the sauce.This I learnt from a culinary homage to the great university of Italian culinary arts, Bologna.The Bolognese have elevated making of pasta to the highest culinary arts. Here there is north and south divide. In the south you had macaroni, the tubular pasta which originated in Sicily and spread throughout the south and Europe through trade.Thomas Jefferson enjoyed it so much in France that he introduced dried pasta to America.

Fresh pasta was made in the north, invariably as a cottage industry by women; the quality of the pasta was function not just of the hand rolling but the wheat and most significantly the eggs. It was never exported.The people who prepared it were called Lasagnari, as lasagna was the generic term for what we now know as fresh pasta, the dough rolled out into a sheet (una sfoglia) from which any number of shapes and varieties could be fashioned.

In Bologna, they make exquisitely tiny tortellini to large tortelli. Into the tortellini the Bolognesi stuff a fine paste of turkey, veal, egg, cheese, prosciutto, and spices such as nutmeg. The greatest place for pasta in the world, is a restaurant called Isola outside Bologna.There are few places in Mumbai where fresh pasta is made, one of them is at the Olive where Chef Max Ortelli prides himself on making fresh pasta as his grandmother did.

One of my favourites is the pappardella, a sort of ribbon noodle; and the best I have had is with a rabbit sauce.Incidentally, in Mumbai the finest I have had was made by Chef Giovani at Stax at the Hyatt Regency who made it with a marvelous ragu with hare; and Chef Max at the Olive does a delightful version with venison.There is nothing quite like the strong gamey flavour of the meat soaking the ribbon noodles and if authentically made (with rosemary, the finest Chianti classico, juniper berries) it has a richness about it.

But perhaps the delight in this dish is not the pasta but the sauce.For the true pasta lover the tortellini or ravioli is in my view the best, the stuffing is inside and that may be rich, but the sauce is of frugal simplicity, a little butter seasoned with sage leaves.Marvellous.

Email : javed.gaya@gmail.com