Pasta Dishes

Appears in
New York Times Menu Cookbook

By Craig Claiborne

Published 1966

  • About

Pasta is a food with a welcome versatility. There are, of course, hundreds of shapes that pasta may take, from acini di pepe (peppercorns) to ziti. The roster includes amorini (little cupids), capelli di prete (priests’ hats), lancette (little spears), lingue di passero (sparrows’ tongues), occhi di lupo (wolf’s eyes), fusilli, tufoli, and the kind known as vermicelli (little worms). The vermicelli come in strands even thinner than spaghettini, which are a slender version of spaghetti, which means “little strings.”