This Pasta With Marjoram Pesto is Inspired by 14th-Century Genoese Coins

Italian pasta comes in all sorts of shapes, many with adorable, evocative names: elbows, butterflies, bow ties, worms, snails, ribbons, nests, ears, even wagon wheels. There are occhi di pernice — “partridge eyes” — and tempestina — “little snowstorm.” And it comes in all sizes, from the teeny tiny pastina to the gigantic boccolottoni. Regional pasta differences are both glorious and maddening. Sometimes the very same shape can have a dozen different names, depending on what prov