Pasta
- At the Mediterranean we have the pasta worldwide capital, which undoubtedly is Italy, where it seems it originated. However, some people say that pasta was introduced by Marco Polo when he came back from the Orient in the 13th century. In an Etruscan tomb were found utensils which had been probably used to make pasta. In a Roman book of century I BC it refers to lasagna. In 1150 there was a factory of dry pasta at Palermo who distributed spaghettis to the Arab and Christian worlds.
- Cereals were the first cultivations in the Middle East. In Arabic, cereal is called "neama", which means Providence and at religious rituals they are a symbol of prosperity. In Tunisia if a child throws a bit of bread on to the floor, he has to collect it, kiss it and to bring it close to his forehead as a token of respect. From the beginning they have been basic not only for nourishment but also in the cultural evolution: the first alphabets and numeration systems appeared to do the accounting of harvests and to distribute them among the population.
- Although the pasta became popular from Italy to the whole northern Mediterranean area (an expansion that already began with the Roman Empire), at the southern area it continues to be a majority who eat forms of wheat little or not elaborated such as semolina, couscous, bulgur or "mhamsa". In all the houses of villages and towns there is a good pantry to keep them. So, from among the 50 countries where more pasta is eaten per inhabitant there are only nine of Mediterranean ones, mainly from the Northern shores (excepting Tunisia); a graphic with the consumption of couscous per inhabitant would have a quite different aspect.
- Nowadays, Italy is the first producer of pasta in the World, followed narrowly by the US. It exports a little less than the half part of its production.
10/06/2010 - 19:29
