The World That Was - Etruscan Pasta with Pesto "testaroli"

Hello and Welcome to The World That Was!



Today, I'll be making an Etruscan dish - which is preserved through Roman cuisine through to modernity! The simple testaroli - a rudimentary ancestor to the pasta that we know and love today!


In any case, let's now take a look at The World That Was! Follow along with my YouTube video, above!


Ingredients

1/2 cup plain flour

1/2 cup wholemeal flour

1 cup water

pesto


Method

1 - Prepare the Batter

To begin with, we need to make the batter. To do this, toss a half a cup of plain white flour into a bowl, along with some wholemeal flour. Mix in an equal amount of water, to form a thin slurry.


2 - Oil the Pan and Make the testaroli

When the batter is ready, pour a ladleful into a pan that's been oiled with olive oil. Spread this into a very thin layer, by tilting the pan around. Cook the thin layer of batter for a minute or two over a high heat, or until the edges start to firm up. Don't cook it all the way through! Flip it over and let the other side cook for another minute or two.

When it's done, you can eat it as is! Serve up warm with a dollop of pesto - that you ideally would have made following my recipe for it. This serving - technically speaking - isn't testaroli, but actually placenta which is a Roman dish prepared in the same way. It's likely that this evolved from Etruscan assimilation by the Romans in the Bronze Age.


3 - Cut Testaroli

For a more modern testaroli, place your dough disks and dissect them with a knife. Score them a few times with a sharp knife, before cutting them at an angle, so you make a bunch of thin dough-diamonds.


4 - Cook Testaroli

Toss your dough diamonds into a pot of boiling water, and let them cook away for a few minutes. Since this is fresh pasta, it won't take too long to cook. Drain them using a colander or a slotted spoon, place them into a bowl, and serve up warm with a large dollop of pesto!


The finished dish is delicious and tender, and is a really quick and simple thing to make! It's also very filling! Given that it seems to have been originally an "accidental" recipe - based on modern scholarship anyway - it definitely proved to be a staple of Etruscan cuisine. Something that can be made using only a few ingredients which is also very filling would have been a staple in the diets of the Etruscans. 

With it's adoption into Roman cuisine, this seems to have undergone numerous other developments, with several Latin accounts recording "thin disks of fried dough" throughout the centuries.


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