https://lanostratavola.com/issue/Recent content in Issues on La Nostra TavolaHugoen-ushttps://lanostratavola.com/issue/1/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://lanostratavola.com/issue/1/The Ear of the Poor The name is disarmingly literal. In Italian dialect, orecchia means “ear,” and -etto is a diminutive suffix. Orecchiette: “little ears.” First recorded in the 13th century, the word appears in Apulian tax records listing pasta as a staple of the contadini — the peasant farmers who worked the latifundia estates of the feudal south. But etymology rarely stops at the literal. There’s a folk tradition in the villages of the Murgia plateau that says the ears were shaped deliberately — so the pasta could hear the prayers of the farmers who made it.https://lanostratavola.com/issue/2/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://lanostratavola.com/issue/2/The First Green In Italy, spring doesn’t arrive on the calendar. It arrives on a plate. Walk into any trattoria in early April, and the menu tells you what season it is — not by what’s listed, but by what’s not. The hearty ribollita of winter has vanished. The porcini ragu is gone. In their place: pale green fave (broad beans), bright asparagi (asparagus), tender piselli (peas), and the elusive carciofi (artichokes) — each one a signal that the earth has turned.