Pasta, so often (and so inadequately) translated as euronoodleseuro, is made exclusively from durum wheat (triticum durum). A deceptively simple mixture of water and flour, it has become Italyeuros best-known and best-loved gastronomic ambassador to the world. Pasta is, in fact, as we all know from our everyday shopping, a mosaic of a hundred different shapes, forms, textures and names, all testimonials to a great culinary discovery: sauces or condiments being equal, the same dough pressed into different shapes will elicit different perceptions of flavour and alimentary fulfilment. There are two basic kinds: pastasciutta, dry pasta, and pasta alleurouovo, egg pasta. Here weeuroll say a few words only about the far more widely used dry sort because the egg varieties, although available commercially as minimally satisfactory packaged industrial products, are much more of a home-made and often downright festive speciality that is worlds removed from the industrial kinds, but doesneurot lend itself to conservation beyond two or three days.Every region of Italy, almost every province (of which there are ninety-three!), has its own favourite form and a sauce or condiment thought particularly suitable to it. The permutations of these and the great variety of condiments makes the world of pasta complex and interesting. The one factor common to all pasta is the durum-wheat flour, which allows that satisfying al dente cooking that doesneurot get mushy after coming out of the pot, this being the indispensable characteristic of Italian pasta as compared with thousands of types of soft-flour euronoodleseuro of other cultures.