Who doesn't love pasta? Marika talks about this extremely popular Italian food: the history, where it's produced, and how to cook it.

Marika divides the types of pasta into different categories and explains their characteristics, ranging from ingredients to shelf life, to cooking time, and consistency.

There are different kinds of flour used to make pasta. "Flour" is a generic term but it's not always accurate. Marika explains it all.

There is an amazing variety of fresh and dried pasta shapes and sizes in Italy, referred to as formati (shapes and sizes). Their names have to do with their surface (smooth, rough, grooved), their size, expressed with a suffix, such as -one, -etto, -ino, etc, and/or what they resemble. Marika makes some sense of the vast assortment of pasta found in Italian supermarkets.

Ilaria is from Lido di Venezia, a small island near Venice. She tells us about the specialties they offer at the bar where she works, a bar that makes its own desserts. How about having a "Spritz" at the bar?

Alberto has a wine shop at the Lido di Venezia and he tells us about his world renowned business, which exclusively sells local and Italian wines.

Antonio is a teacher and we find him at Somma Vesuviana, on the slopes of Vesuvius, near Naples. For some time he has tending a small garden, where he grows vegetables, which he sees as miracles of the earth, with seeds developing into fruits.

Franco Calafatti shows us his marvelous shop filled with spices. He brings us into his world, his special relationship with the spices, from traveling the world in search of the plants, to the harvesting, to the sorting, to the crushing.

Even though the tomato is an immigrant in Italy, it has become synonymous with Italian cooking. The soil produced by Vesuvius and the mild climate of the area around Naples and Salerno have allowed the San Marzano tomato to become King.

Patrizia works as an agronomist collaborating with farmers who grow heirloom vegetables of the Campania tradition. She describes a couple of different kinds of tomatoes and what they're typically used for.

Watermelon is another product of this special terrain on the slopes of Vesuvius. In the north, this is called cocomero, but in the south, it's anguria. There are some sensational wines from Vesuvius, too.

This land is not only good for cultivating grapes for wine, but also the special piennolo tomatoes, that keep for several months.

Gragnano is a town near Naples known for its pasta production. There are many different shapes and types, but they all are a bit rough to the touch, because they go through a bronze cutter, rather than a Teflon one. That's why the pasta holds the sauce better. Of course, everyone living in Gragnano is an expert about pasta.

Coral has been made into jewelry in Torre del Greco since the fifteenth century. In that same century, a variety of grapes arrived from Catalunya, which over time has produced a wine with a unique personality.

The Romans were the ones to introduce the culture of wine to the area around Mount Vesuvius as can be seen by what was left behind in places like Ercolano. And it is in Ercolano where a unique cooperative has been set up to cultivate a very special variety of tomatoes.