Oretta Zanini De Vita

The nuns taught the girls that their tortellini dough was thin enough only when they held it up to the window and could see the nearby Sanctuary of the Madonna of San Luca.

For centuries “pasta was a luxury, you ate it only inside vegetable soup,” Ms. Zanini DeVita said. In the southern Basilicata region it was eaten “once or twice a year: for Easter, Christmas and Carnival.” Flour was for the rich. “The poor wouldn’t even see it in paintings,” she said.

- from the New York Times article "So You Think You Know Pasta" by Rachel Donadio