The Many Shapes of Pasta

PASTA CAN BE FOUND IN AN EXTRAORDINARY NUMBER of varieties and shapes. A comprehensive list would be encyclopedic in length, not to mention that a definitive lexicon is not really possible. The same shape of pasta can have a different name depending on the region it is from. Sometimes the same name can even be used for a number of different shapes, depending on where you are. When I first visited Verona to create a cooking school in its beautiful wine country, I was quite taken aback when I ordered lasagne at a restaurant and was served what to me were tagliatelle, noodles that are slightly wider than fettuccine (which, by the way, are called lasagnette in Verona). The dish of baked lasagne that the rest of Italy is familiar with is called pasticcio in Verona. Filled pasta shapes can be even more confusing. The square-shaped filled pasta known as tortelloni in the Romagna part of Emilia Romagna may be called ravioli, tortelli, or pansotti in other regions. In Bologna, which is in the Emilia part of Emilia Romagna, tortelloni are the large version of tortellini, the bishops hat-shaped pasta, which in Romagna are instead called cappelletti.