Pasta al forno

Pasta al forno, literally pasta to the oven and also called timballo di pasta, is a typical dish of Italian cuisine made of usually short pasta covered with bechamel sauce, tomato sauce and cheese, then cooked in the oven. The baked pasta family falls into two broad groups. The version with bechamel was born in the Renaissance courts of central and northern Italy as a poorer variant of meat pies, and famous dishes such as lasagne al forno and Emilian cannelloni probably descend from it. The other group, called pasta nfurnata or pasta ncasciata, is among the most typical dishes of Sicily, especially around Mistretta in the province of Messina and in the province of Catania. Its roots are described as very ancient and tied to the sumptuous timbales the Arabs brought to Sicily during their rule from the ninth century, which is where the name timballo comes from.