oneillchris

I am learning italian on audio CD and the word for Pasta seems to perhaps also mean Pastry and sometimes I think its spaghetti, I hate to sound ignorant but what is the correct way to say pasta ie meaning spaghetti, pennine etc.

FainaAgain

Macaroni

Eloise

Pasta meaning pastry usually has some sort of description with it, such as "pasta sfoglia" (puff pastry).

The absolutely correct term for pasta (of any shape or form, including spaghetti, penne, rigatoni, etc., etc.) with a sauce is "pasta asciutta" (dry pasta) as opposed to "pasta in brodo" (pasta in broth, such as tortellini in beef or chicken broth).

If you simply say "pasta," everyone will understand that you mean a pasta in sauce.

cmt

The word "pasta" is literally dough. In Italian it's usually used to mean a pastry, but it is also used to mean "pasta" (also called "pastasciutta&quot. I think in Italy, it is more common for people to refer to the specific type of pasta instead of using the generic term. So you might see, e.g., spaghetti, linguine, penne, perciatelli, conchiglie, farfalline, ditalini, etc. rather than "pasta." By the way, I think "macaroni" is an American (and maybe British and maybe French spelling) of a type of pasta called "maccheroni" in Italian.

Seamus

An Italian friend told me that pasta is made at home by hand, and that "maccheroni" is the commerically produced type - anyone else ever heard this?

cigalechanta

I was taught also that macaroni was commercial and my mom's and grandmaa's was pasta.

Patrick

Slight variation. I always thought that when they are listed separately, maccheroni is a dried pasta while "pasta" refers to the fresh stuff -- not dried. Of course that relates to the other answers as the dried stuff is usually produced commercially and is found in a box or a bag, but the fresh stuff can't be.

wlzmatilida

Hello!

Apparently Capt. Kirk is on a quest for spagetti as well - there was an absolutely hysterical article in the SF Chronicle this past Sunday (if you want to see it, go to www.sfchronicle.com and then find "Travel&quot about Celebrity Blogs. Apparently William Shatner has one and was relating his tale of woe about driving all along the coastline of Italy and not being able to find spagetti.

Melodie

tedgale

Captain Kirk's shouldn't be so picky. The Canadian spaghetti I ate in my youth was just awful. I expect he ate the same.

And his cousin was our dentist.

casinadirosa

Hi,
pasta is the generic name, both for those made at home and that you buy. Actually, macccheroni is just a type of pasta, which in the States has been generalized to indicate all apsta, maybe. But here it is just a type of pasta.

Essentially, pasta is dough in a sentence like "I prepared the dough for the pizza": "ho preparato la pasta per la pizza".
Pasta is the general term to indicate any type of pasta you eat as a first course: "I would like a plate of pasta" "Vorrei un piatto di pasta".

Pasta is also what you eat with your cappuccino in the morning: in that case it is countable, 1 pasta.

Both for the mass noun pasta and for the countable noun pasta there are specific types. So, if pasta is the typical Italian food, you can have spaghetti, penne, pennette, farfalle, conchiglie, maccheroni, linguine, pappardelle and much more.
If pasta is what you have in the morning you can have a cornetto, bigné, sfogliatella, treccina, and much more.

celticdreams

This was actual very enlightening. In my house growing up (with my second generation Italian mother) everything was macaroni - except spaghetti! To this day, I like them all - except spaghetti. And of course, it was all eaten with gravy.

Intrepid1

And please instruct us how to properly pronounce the word "maccheroni" so we don't have to go through that whole "how do you properly pronounce bruschetta" business a second time.

rex

maccheroni = mah-keh-roe-nee

though there will be arguments in favor of mah-kay-roe-nee also.

the vowel sound in the second syllable is somewhere between "keh" (as in keg) and kay (as in cake).

Best wishes,

Rex

oneillchris

Im thinking that casinadirosa has the most credible answer, so I,m going with it. And as far as Canadian Pasta goes my family have home made gnochi with bragiol italian sausage hard peperoni and even sometimes chicken wings in the sauce, thereès another distinction many American including Victoria Gotti call it gravy, for me Gravy is not sauce. Anyway can you tell Im on a diet, one month away from my trip to italy

E stato un vero piacere de imparare questo palabra (Pasta)

cmt

parola=Italian
palabra=Spanish

"Bragiol" isn't an Italian word. You might be thinking of braciole. My grandmother usually made it for holiday meals, but we never used to have gnocchi, which I think were not typical of her region.


Eloise, Casinadirosa, and I gave essentially the same answer.

Spygirl

Hi oneill-that would be "questA parola" vero? (sorriso)

Patrick

So how many of you are old enough to remember when we Americans thought there were only two forms of "pasta" -- a word which we never even heard of at the time?

There was spaghetti and there was macaroni. Period.

cmt

For holiday dinners with grandparents there were usually manicotti. A routine alternative to spaghetti was always linguine. There was always pastina or other tiny stuff for soup when someone was sick.

cigalechanta

Unless your parents were born in Italy like mine. My mother made the best PastaFagioli I have ever tasted.

ira

>..many American including Victoria Gotti call it gravy, for me Gravy is not sauce.<

Of course. Gravy has meat in it. Sauce doesn't.

>There was spaghetti and there was macaroni. Period.<

There were also noodles.