Name: ________________________________ Class/: __________Number:___________ Date: ______________________

PASTA
If you ask people: ‘what do Italians eat?’ - they answer: ‘pasta and pizza’.
And I bet that most people in the world have eaten pasta, if not pizza! Pasta is
very versatile – you can add meat, fish, vegetables or cheese and you can serve
it with any sauce you want. A popular sauce in the UK is Bolognese, which is a
meat and tomato sauce. We usually have this sauce with spaghetti. In fact, many
British people say that spaghetti Bolognese, which we shorten to ‘spag bol’ is their favourite dish.
Pasta is made from wheat and it comes in many different shapes. There are about three hundred
and fifty shapes of pasta, and even more names for them! For example, in English ‘farfalle’ pasta is called
butterfly pasta and also bow tie pasta. Did you know that pasta can be organised into different groups?
There is long pasta, which includes spaghetti; tubes, which includes penne; pasta for soup, which includes
alfabetti; stuffed, which includes ravioli and then there is special pasta which can be any shape. Special
pasta includes fusilli.
In Italy, pasta can be served as a starter. It is also an ingredient in that famous Italian soup,
minestrone, which means ‘big soup’. Pasta is a versatile, nutritious and quick to prepare meal. You can add
parmesan cheese if you like it. Perfetto! Bon appetito!
TRUE OR FALSE? CORRECT THE SENTENCES WHICH ARE FALSE:
1. __ You can add many different ingredients to pasta.
2. __ Many British people love a dish called ‘spaghetti milanese.’
3. __ Pasta is made from potatoes.
4. __ There are many different shapes of pasta.
5. __ Pasta can be divided into different groups, or categories.
ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS IN FULL SENTENCES:
a) What is ‘spaghetti Bolognese?’
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b) How many different pasta shapes are there?
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c) Is pasta always a main course in Italy?
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d) What do you think ‘perfetto’ and ‘bon appetito’ mean in Thai? How do you translate them into your language?
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