Hello, I'm Maria Rigatoni. Welcome to Italy, and welcome to my house.
In Italy there is so much to see and so much to do.
But best of all, there is so much to eat.
Italy is famous for pizza, pasta, and the world's best ice cream.
Today I will be making spaghetti with tomato sauce for lunch.
The first thing we need to do is to make a nice pile of flour.
Then we make a big hole in the top of our pile.
Just like this. It's for the eggs.
Now carefully we crack four eggs into the hole.
Add just a little bit of water, not too much.
Next we mix all the ingredients together.
Now you have to knead the dough. This is the hard part.
You have to push and fold, push and fold, push and fold.
Keep kneading! It makes your hands sore.
Now the dough is perfect, but it has to sit for thirty minutes.
While we wait, I'll tell you a story.
In the thirteenth century, there was an Italian man named Marco Polo.
He was a great explorer and a famous Italian.
When Marco was only 14 years old, his father decided to go on a voyage of exploration.
Marco begged his father to take him along, and finally his father agreed.
They traveled all the way to China and they had great adventures.
During their voyage, Marco saw many things that Italians had never seen before, such as eyeglasses and ice cream.
But best of all, he discovered long, thin noodles.
Marco Polo brought these noodles to Italy, and we called them spaghetti.
Some historians claim that Marco Polo discovered noodles in the Arab world, and historians still debate whether he really discovered them in China.
Nonetheless, it is widely accepted by the Italians that spaghetti noodles were first imported to Italy from China.
Okay, we are ready for the next step. This is my pasta maker.
Today I'll use it to make spaghetti noodles.
We take our dough and put it in the pasta maker.
Then presto! We have long, thin lines of spaghetti.
Next we have to boil the spaghetti.
We take our noodles and carefully put them into boiling water.
Now we have to wait for ten minutes, so I will tell you another story.
Do you see this tomato sauce?
When we serve this on top of spaghetti, it tastes delicious.
We make this sauce by boiling tomatoes, other vegetables, and spices for many, many hours―sometimes as long as one day.
But did you know that at one time we didn't have tomatoes in Italy?
Tomatoes had to come from Mexico.
In the sixteenth century, the people who explored Mexico found fresh tomatoes.
Because they were so delicious, they decided to bring some back to Europe.
Soon we began to grow tomatoes in Italy.
Because of the warm sun and good soil, tomatoes grew very well in Italy.
So we began making many kinds of foods from tomatoes.
Tomato sauce is now the most famous Italian sauce.
It is used for spaghetti and pizza.
Ah, the spaghetti is ready. Now we pour the hot noodles into the strainer.
Then we put them on a plate. Last, we add some tomato sauce.
And here you are, Mrs. Rigatoni's spaghetti. Mangia! Mangia!