Etruscan Pasta “Testaroli”
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 (for two servings)
½ cup plain flour
½ cup wholemeal flour
1 cup water
pesto
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 (pronounced plakenta) 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.
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.
janainaart
dailybridgerton
izzy806
jbbartram-illu
stormborns
kaledo-art
blakekathryn
dededos
baratheonpilled
