Pasta with a Past...a

@cindypricillazanetsa

Pasta with a past...a. 

If you want to trace pasta's long and storied past, you will need to travel the Silk Road from Constantinople to the ancient Chinese city of Chang An. And after your journey, you still may wind up throwing spaghetti at the wall, because this history is quite tangled.

The noodle is a staple food born somewhere culinary historians cannot totally agree upon, and both Italy and China still lay claim to being its inventors.

However, scholars have shown that the oldest references to noodles were indeed found in writings from ancient China. And further proof came from archaeologists in 2005 who discovered the oldest noodle in the world: a 4,000 year-old noodle made of millet and foxtail, which was discovered under a bowl at an archaeological site in China. This is still the oldest noodle ever found.

The second oldest reference to pasta is in the Jerusalem Talmud from the 5th Century AD, which talks about dried semolina flour being boiled. .
And still the legend that pasta was invented in Sicily gets historians into hot water, because some authorities still find the evidence conflicting and unsatisfactory.

Still, let's twist pasta around our forks as we consider this tangled story.