[net.cooks] Pasta: USA vs. Italy

ccc@bu-cs.UUCP (Cameron Carson) (08/28/85)

>Subject: Re: Pesto Recipe Wanted
>Spoon it over your favorite kind of hot cooked
>pasta (my italian friends who gave me the recipe like rigatoni since the
>pesto kind of works its way inside).

An observation:
Growing up in the western US, I had a very narrow concept of pasta.
Leaving egg-noodle-type pastas aside, the only pasta that got much
airplay, so to speak, was spaghetti, with an occasional lasagna thrown in.
Then I spent nearly two years living in Italy, and the only people I saw 
eating spaghetti were americans; only one (1) time did I ever see spaghetti 
prepared as a first course in an italian home.  The standard pasta
was 'penne rigate' or what I buy here as one type or another of
rigatoni/mostaccioli/ziti.  So, could someone with more experience answer 
this question: Is spaghetti-eating more common in other regions of Italy
(I spent all my time in Puglia and Sicily)[no Sicily flames]?

A pasta-related episode:
A native vistor to the largely american office I worked in became quite 
nauseous when he saw us eating a kind of macaroni salad.  He found the
thought of eating cold pasta with mayonnaise to be quite disgusting.
Needless to say, he refused all offers to try some.

-- 
Cameron C. Carson
Distributed Systems Group
Boston University ACC

UUCP: ...!harvard!bu-cs!ccc
ARPA:  ccc%bu-cs.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa

susan@umcp-cs.UUCP (Susan McCandless) (08/29/85)

That is interesting, my step father who is Italian, and lived in New York for 
a good part of his life, refuses to have anything to do with pasta salads.