Pasta also cooked nowadays in the Filipino kitchen, like carbonara, pasta with alfredo sauce, and baked macaroni. These dishes are usually cooked for gatherings and special occasions, like family reunions or Christmas. Macaroni or other tube pasta is also used in "sopas", a local chicken broth soup. "Fettuccine alfredo" with cream, cheese and butter, and spaghetti with tomato sauce (with or without meat) are popular Italian-style dishes in the United States. In Australia, boscaiola sauce, based on bacon and mushrooms, is one favorite among many. Although numerous variations of ingredients for different pasta products are known, in Italy the commercial manufacturing
Pasta (plural "lagana"), which in Latin refers to a thin sheet of dough, and gives rise to Italian "lasagna". In North Africa, a food similar to pasta, known as couscous, has been eaten for centuries. However, it lacks the distinguishing malleable nature of pasta, couscous being more akin to droplets of dough. At first, dry pasta was a luxury item in Italy because of high labor costs; durum wheat semolina had to be kneaded for a long time. There is a legend of Marco Polo importing pasta from China which originated with the "Macaroni Journal", published by an association of food