secca

Arab colonizers introduced noodles to the Italians, who perfected the art of making pasta secca; Moorish conquerors brought the tiny, filbert-sized meatballs called al-bunduqieh to the Spanish, who called them albóndigas; and the Spanish completed the recipe by sailing to the New World and bringing the tomato to the Mediterranean.

Day of Honey Annia Ciezadlo 2011

Arab colonizers introduced noodles to the Italians, who perfected the art of making pasta secca; Moorish conquerors brought the tiny, filbert-sized meatballs called al-bunduqieh to the Spanish, who called them albóndigas; and the Spanish completed the recipe by sailing to the New World and bringing the tomato to the Mediterranean.

Day of Honey Annia Ciezadlo 2011

Thus it is that al-Idrisi gives us the first ever reference to pasta secca on Italian soil.

Delizia! John Dickie 2008

Precisely 800 years after al-Idrisi first reported the presence of pasta secca on Italian soil in A Diversion for the Man Longing to Travel to Far-Off Places, Italians were finally eating all the maccheroni they wanted.

Delizia! John Dickie 2008

Thus, half a century after they reached their ceiling with pasta secca, Italians are now eating as many tortellini as they want.

Delizia! John Dickie 2008

The maccheroni he refers to were probably small dumplings bound with egg, rather than tubes of hard grain pasta secca.

Delizia! John Dickie 2008

Italians also started eating pasta secca in the Middle Ages.

Delizia! John Dickie 2008

So the strong likelihood is that it was only after it reached Sicily, and after it reached the markets of the eastern Mediterranean, that making pasta secca became an exercise in centralized production and distribution for a wider market.

Delizia! John Dickie 2008

According to al-Idrisi, pasta secca was already present in Sicily at least a century before Marco Polo was born.

Delizia! John Dickie 2008

Italians sometimes avoid confusion by using pasta secca to refer to this kind of dehydrated product.

Delizia! John Dickie 2008