Italian pasta

Orecchiette, which means “little ears,” comes from Puglia, Italy, though a very similar version of this pasta also emerged in France in the Middle Ages. Orecchiette is shaped like a cup or a small bowl, which catches the sauce. One of the most popular ways to serve orecchiette is with broccoli rabe and sausage.

This ridged, shell-shaped pasta is served with chunky sauce. The shape is very similar to that of a snail’s shell. Lumanche appears in both Roman and southern Italian cuisine. The larger version is known as lumaconi.

Sauce easily adheres to the ridges in this seashell-shaped pasta. Conchigliette are “little shells.” Another version, conchiglie al nero di seppia, is dyed black with squid ink.

Chifferi Rigati takes their name from the German word "Kipfel", a typical Austrian cake in the same shape which was very popular in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany at the time of Marie Louise of Austria.

The double-ended opening and the distinctive ridges mean that this pasta is perfect with less dense, more liquid sauces, all of which are captured inside it.

Chifferi Rigati are excellent just with a simple tomato sauce, but are also delicious with sauces made from beef, pork or vegetables.

This pasta also goes really well when prepared with pulses.

Casarecce comes from Sicily and resembles sheets of paper that have rolled in on themselves. The folds in this pasta help perfectly capture the sauce.

Spirali is a variety of pasta that are formed into corkscrew or helical shapes, as traditionally it is "spun" by pressing and rolling a small rod over the thin strips of pasta to wind them around it in a corkscrew shape.

In addition to plain and whole wheat varieties, as with any pasta, other colours can be made by mixing other ingredients into the dough, which also affects the flavour, for example, beetroot or tomato for red, spinach for green, and cuttlefish ink for black.

One of the most well known types of pasta is fettuccine. Originally from Rome, these “little ribbons” of pasta are well suited to a simple sauce of oil and butter, but its best-known use is probably in fettuccine alfredo. The dish isn’t an ancient Italian recipe: Alfredo di Lelio began serving it at his Rome restaurant in 1914. Legend has it that he came up with the recipe to help cure his wife’s nausea during pregnancy. Two silent movie actors brought it back to America, where it became an instant classic.

Ruote are pieces of pasta shaped like miniature wagon wheels, sometimes also called Rotelle.

Fusili is a variety of pasta that are formed into corkscrew or helical shapes, as traditionally it is "spun" by pressing and rolling a small rod over the thin strips of pasta to wind them around it in a corkscrew shape.

In addition to plain and whole wheat varieties, as with any pasta, other colours can be made by mixing other ingredients into the dough, which also affects the flavour, for example, beetroot or tomato for red, spinach for green, and cuttlefish ink for black.

Spaghetti might be the most popular, and best known, style of pasta on this list, and it’s also one of the oldest. One cultural survey of Sicily from around 1154 mentions a precursor to spaghetti — dried strands of dough made from wheat flour — being exported to other regions of Italy. Another version called spaghetti alla chitarra originated in Abruzzo, where it was first made using a tool similar to a guitar (chitarra means guitar). The dough was placed on the chitarra then pushed through so that the strings cut the sheet of dough into strips.

Lasagna are a type of wide, flat pasta, possibly one of the oldest types of pasta. Lasagna commonly refers to a culinary dish made with stacked layers of pasta alternated with sauces and ingredients such as meats, vegetables and cheese, and sometimes topped with melted grated cheese. Typically, the cooked pasta is assembled with the other ingredients and then baked in an oven. The resulting lasagna casserole is cut into single-serving square portions.

Cannelloni ([kannelˈloːni]; Italian for "large reeds") are a cylindrical type of lasagna generally served baked with a filling and covered by a sauce in Italian cuisine. Popular stuffings include spinach and ricotta or minced beef. The shells are then typically covered with tomato sauce.

Cannelloni are also a typical dish of the Catalan cuisine of Sicily, where they are called canelons and traditionally consumed on Saint Stephen's Day.

Early references to macheroni ripieni (stuffed pasta) can be traced back to 1770; but the word cannelloni seems to have appeared at the turn of the 20th century. Manicotti are the American version of cannelloni, though the term may often refer to the actual baked dish. The original difference may be that cannelloni consisted of pasta sheets wrapped around the filling, and manicotti was machine-extruded cylinders filled from one end.