Italian cuisine more varieties that are filled with other ingredients like ravioli and tortellini. The word pasta is also used to refer to dishes in which pasta products are a primary ingredient. It is usually served with sauce. There are hundreds of different shapes of pasta with at least locally recognized names. Examples include spaghetti (thin rods), rigatoni (tubes or cylinders), fusilli (swirls), and lasagne (sheets). Dumplings, like gnocchi (made with potatoes or pumpkin) and noodles like spätzle, are sometimes considered pasta. They are both traditional in parts of Italy. Pasta is categorized in two basic styles: dried and fresh. Dried pasta
Macaroni recipes. In Italy, the noun "maccheroni" refers to straight, tubular, square-ended "pasta corta" ("short-length pasta"). Maccheroni may also refer to long pasta dishes such as "maccheroni alla chitarra" and "frittata di maccheroni", which are prepared with long pasta like spaghetti. The name comes from Italian "maccheroni" , plural form of "maccherone". The many variants sometimes differ from each other because of the texture of each pasta: "rigatoni" and "tortiglioni", for example, have ridges down their lengths, while "chifferi", "lumache", "lumaconi", "pipe", "pipette", etc. refer to elbow-shaped pasta similar to macaroni in North American culture. However, the product as well as