'Laganum', alatria, burballa

PalmThe porch was small, and the steam from the cooking pot fogged the windows, making the space even more sheltered from the outside world—a little haven for everyday cooking. Inside the pot, a thick, yellowish broth simmered, its aroma heavy and pungent. Chopped parsley awaited its turn on the wooden chopper. Sometimes it was enriched with a snail found among the weeds in the yard, with asparagus from the edges, or a mushroom when it was in season. If I was lucky, it would be rice; if not, noodles or burballes (a type of sausage), and woe betide me, for I would struggle to finish whatever dish they placed before me.

Noodles are one of the oldest and most versatile forms of pasta. Their origin cannot be attributed to a single place or time and they appear in various unrelated cultures. Pasta making was a culinary solution that transformed grain into a manageable dough that could be dried, easily baked, and, above all, preserved and transported. In the Greek world, there existed the laganonA sheet of dough made with flour and water. In the cuisine of the Roman Empire, these sheets were cut or layered with other ingredients, as described in the cookbook attributed to Marcus Gavius ​​Apicius. In Book IV of theArt of cookingDedicated to various dishes, he describes a daily casserole made with sow's udders, chicken, and fish, which was broken up and bound with eggs, and a sauce made with garum, wine, and raisin wine. This mixture was then placed between layers of pasta in a dish and served sprinkled with pepper. Despite the differences, the dish would be a clear precursor to the sheet pasta that, many centuries later, would be called lasagna.

Medieval Pasta

The known medieval pasta was shaped like what we now call noodles; they made it in various thicknesses and designated it in different ways. The word "alatry" (or "aletry"), believed to be of Arabic origin, may also derive from the Greek word 'ytria'(pasta). Over time, the word was lost and the word 'noodle' became established, appearing for the first time in a shopping list of King Martin I. The term 'macaroni' is also known. Pasta was served boiled in almond milk or broth, sometimes accompanied by raisins, meat, or grated cheese. An exception to the cooking method would be the ash trees, which we find detailed in the Sent Soví's Book They are cooked with chopped aromatic herbs (cilantro, fennel, cumin, watercress, parsley, and aniseed, among many others), water, and flour. The resulting dough is then divided into portions and fried in oil.

Pastas like noodles and burballes are rarely mentioned in our early cookbooks, mainly because they were humble, simple dishes and because the broth was consumed with bread or, to a lesser extent, with rice. The first cookbook to mention that pastas like macaroni or noodles can be cooked in the broth from the pot will be Mallorcan cuisine (1886), by Pedro de Alcántara Peña, a custom that would become established from the first half of the 20th century onwards thanks to the expansion of industrial pasta production and small family businesses that manufactured it by hand.

Burballes, long, flat pasta made from flour and water, are very characteristic of Mallorcan cuisine. Their name could be due to the resemblance between their shape and the thin wooden shavings produced by a ribot (a type of knife) when it is passed over a surface, known as burballa, burballó, or burballí.

Today's recipe is simple and versatile and can be enriched with a more elaborate sofrito (a sautéed base). I have opted for a quick but very tasty one-pot dish with seasonal vegetables.