The Platonic Forms of Pasta (including farro - emmer wheat - with zucchini and cheese.)
Cooks who focus on the physical variety of the individual components of Pasta, or A Pasta, miss the point. Both Pasta and A Pasta exist in a higher realm of ideas and imagination in which Pasta and A Pasta reflect the perfect essence – or Form -- of their physical manifestations.
Let me explain. We all know that Pasta comes in a myriad of sizes, shapes, textures and forms; some flour based, some even based on potatoes, and yet even the smallest child knows what Pasta is when he sees it. Why? Because all physical forms of Pasta reflect Pasta’s basic essence or Form. It is this Form that unites and defines Pasta regardless of its individual manifestations.
Likewise, A Pasta is not defined by the infinite variety of mixing Sauce with Pasta. For even a slave knows when you order her to make A Pasta that you want some form of Pasta in some form of Sauce, which demonstrates the abstract universality of the principle, or Form, that A Pasta in its physicality represents. The pasta you eat does not define A Pasta. The Form in your mind that coincides with the Form in the mind of every other man, woman, child and slave who instantly recognize A Pasta when they see or hear of one is what defines A Pasta.
