Paste. This can mean either pasta, noodles in all their forms, dough, pastry, cake or biscuit (US: cookie). As in English, it can also describe the paste of a cheese. Pasta as we know it seems to have arisen in Sicily during the Middle Ages and is traditionally made with durum wheat ground into semolina, mixed to a paste with water and then forced through different types of nozzles to create different shapes. It may contain eggs. Pasta is boiled and served with a sauce of some kind and is a traditional first course in Italy, or is cooked in a soup. When "pasta" is used as a prefix to a named dish it usually indicates a short pasta or maccheroni of some sort. It a longer pasta is to be used it will normally be specified, as in, say, spaghetti alla carbonara. Most pasta is bought dried, rather than fresh and, for those who like al dente pasta, it is often the best. Stuffed pasta, and so on, are the most varied of the pasta dishes and each part of Italy has its own recipes. In the north thie stuffings are predominantly meat while, in the south and coastal areas, they will be based on vegetables and fish. Una pasta is a small cake or pastry.