The pasta aisle

(04/18/2008)

by Haley Kingsland, Stanford University

Every week I visit the local overcrowded STANDA for a small jar of Nutella, and always on my excursion past zooming metallic shopping carts brimming with ripe tomatoes, raw bloody prosciutto, and orange vitamin juice I find myself riveted by the calm rows and rows of identical blue Barilla boxes in the pasta aisle. Their plastic frontal packaging clearly displays the vast array of translucent tan-ish pasta peeking out from underneath— the thin and stringy capelli d’angelo, the round and thicker spaghetti, the flat linguine and fettucine, the ribbed, tubular, and deftly chopped penne (and its smaller counterpart pennette), and of course, maccheroni, familiar to many Americans. But new to me were the graceful, arching spirals of cellentani and the bowtie-butterfly farfalle, as well as the fusilli twisted like hasty scribbles, the orecchiette shaped like little tiny miniature bowls from which dollhouse figures could eat, the bucatini (big hollow spaghetti) and the rigatoni (giant ridged tubes that could certainly surround quite a few pieces of penne). My favorite? Garganelli— a heavy, woven pasta shaped like penne, well worth the weight that sits in my stomach after a hearty dish served with gamberetti and pomodori. Indeed, gazing at all of these creations neatly tucked inside their blue Barilla boxes almost makes me forget my mission for another Italian staple at the very rear of the supermercato— Nutella!

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