Italy, Region by Region: The Pasta Dishes You've Never Ordered

Italian cuisine isn't one cuisine. It's twenty regional cuisines with deeply held, sometimes ferocious differences in tradition, technique, and ingredient.

Liguria: Trofie al Pesto

Pesto Genovese is the original — basil, Ligurian olive oil, pine nuts, garlic, and Parmigiano mixed in a marble mortar, served with trofie and a sliced boiled potato and green bean. The potato seems bizarre until you eat it.

Sicily: Pasta con le Sarde

Fresh sardines, wild fennel, raisins, pine nuts, saffron, and breadcrumbs tossed with bucatini. This is Arab-Sicilian cooking in a bowl and almost impossible to find outside of Sicily.

Veneto: Bigoli in Salsa

A Friday dish from Venice: thick whole-wheat bigoli noodles with a sauce of slow-cooked onions and anchovies. The anchovies essentially dissolve into the onions over 45 minutes, creating something deeply savory and sweet.

Sardinia: Malloreddus alla Campidanese

Small saffron-striped pasta shells with a pork and fennel sausage ragù. The further you travel from the tourist centers, the better the pasta gets. This is a reliable rule and an excellent travel strategy.