Original photo by Emanuela Casula/ iStock
When debating the best pasta shape, a few classic heavyweights are bound to be in the mix: spaghetti, penne, rigatoni, tortellini, and, of course, gnocchi. All of these can easily be made by millions of people worldwide, even those who aren’t fortunate enough to have a nonna in their life. This distinguishes those types from su filindeu, the world’s rarest pasta, which until recently only three people knew how to cook — all of whom belong to the same family.
One of them is Paola Abraini, who lives in the small Sardinian city of Nuoro and wakes up every day at 7 a.m. to begin making “the threads of god,” as the pasta has been nicknamed. The recipe has been passed down in her family for more than three centuries, though they don’t exactly keep the secret under lock and key. In recent years, Abraini’s family has begun teaching others to prepare the pasta in an effort to preserve the recipe. At least two chefs in Los Angeles and one in Singapore even serve it in their restaurants. And anyone with half an hour to spare can watch a detailed instructional video about su filindeu — they just probably won’t be able to accurately replicate Abraini’s work.
Such was the case when engineers from Barilla visited Abraini and unsuccessfully attempted to reproduce her work. That's likely because the process requires folding semolina dough into 256 perfectly even strands before stretching them diagonally across a circular frame in a three-layer pattern. There are only three ingredients — semolina wheat, water, and salt — but Abraini insists the most important ingredient is elbow grease.
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“Pasta” comes from the Italian word for ______.
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“Pasta” comes from the Italian word for paste.
Thomas Jefferson loved macaroni and cheese.
Before he became president, Thomas Jefferson was a foodie. “The best pasta in Italy,” he wrote in 1787, “is made with a particular sort of flour, called Semola, in Naples.” He was so impressed with “maccaroni” (as he spelled it) during his time in Italy that he had a macaroni mold maker shipped to him from Naples.
A recipe for macaroni and cheese in Jefferson’s own handwriting survives, though it was likely dictated to him by one of his enslaved chefs. It calls for whoever makes it to “work [the ingredients] together without water, and very well” and then “cut it into small peices [sic] which roll again with the hand into long slips, & then cut them to a proper length.” The founding father even served the dish during a state dinner in 1802.
Michael Nordine is a writer and editor living in Denver. A native Angeleno, he has two cats and wishes he had more.
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