In this nation of bread eaters. The subject of regional pasta is, ironically vast. There are, indeed, dozens, if not more, different traditional Greek pastas, and certainly dozens of ways to cook them. Some are truly unusual. Pasta has always been a part and parcel of the Greek larder. Common belief has it that Marco Polo was the first European to encounter pasta, in his travels to China, and that it turns, he brought it back with him where it became undeniably Italian. It seems more likely though that pasta may not have come from any one place but from several, including ancient Greece. The ancient Greeks had a kind of primitive pasta in the form of a grilled batter they called laganum. The word may be the etymological root of what the Italians call lasagna. Most Greek pasta was made and dried at the end of the summer. Some, though, was made and eaten fresh.