Maccheroni alla Chitarra

Maccheroni alla chitarra are Abruzzo's signature pasta—square-cut, long strands of egg pasta made by pressing a sheet of dough through the 'chitarra' (guitar), a traditional wooden frame strung with fine steel wires that cuts the dough into perfectly square-cross-section noodles roughly 2-3mm on each side. The chitarra is one of Italian pasta-making's most ingenious tools: a rectangular frame (roughly 30x50cm) with thin steel wires strung parallel across its width, spaced 2-3mm apart. A sheet of egg pasta dough is laid over the wires and pressed through with a rolling pin—the wires slice the dough cleanly into identical square strands that fall through onto a wooden board below. The resulting pasta has a texture distinct from both spaghetti (round cross-section) and linguine (flat): the square edges catch and hold sauce in their corners, while the four flat surfaces provide more grip than round spaghetti. The dough is a standard Abruzzese egg pasta: semolina flour (or a mix of semolina and tipo 00), eggs, and sometimes a splash of olive oil—firmer and more golden than the soft egg pasta of Emilia-Romagna, with a satisfying chew. The canonical sauce is a ragù d'agnello (lamb ragù) or ragù di pallottine (a sauce with tiny meatballs), both distinctly Abruzzese preparations, though maccheroni alla chitarra are also excellent with a simple tomato sauce or the region's famous peperoncino-spiked aglio e olio. The pasta format is unique to Abruzzo and neighboring Molise, and the chitarra tool is found in every Abruzzese household, typically passed down through generations.

• Emilian tagliatelle (egg pasta tradition)
• Japanese soba cutting (precision-cut noodle)
• Korean naengmyeon (long strand noodle)