Make your own pasta

“IT CAN BE bought everywhere and in all the shops for very little money,” observed Goethe on a visit to Naples in 1787. “As a rule it is simply cooked in water and seasoned with grated cheese.” Pasta’s economy and convenience have since helped it conquer the world. Supermarkets from Kansas City to Qatar have recently been stripped of the stuff.

Pasta is probably a descendant of ancient Asian noodles (though the story of Marco Polo importing it from China is apocryphal). Etruscan and Roman forms, described by Horace and Cicero, are likely to have been baked or fried; then, in the fifth century, the Talmud mentioned the boiling of dough. This method took off in the Middle Ages, aided by a drying process brought to Sicily by Arabs. In northern Italy, egg-enriched doughs and filled pastas proliferated; but it was only in the 1970s that British and American diners looked beyond their ersatz spaghetti and meatballs or mac ’n’ cheese.