What if I told you there was a pasta so special that for more than 300 years pilgrims on the Italian island of Sardinia have trekked 20 miles through the dark just to have a single bowl? What if I told you this pasta was so fiendishly complicated to make that it’s thwarted celebrity chefs and the world’s biggest pasta company?

For generations, the art of how to make su filindeu, or threads of god, has been a closely guarded secret. Only women in the small city of Nuoro were allowed to learn this craft. Each mother would teach her daughter how to make these mysterious noodles.