Over the past twenty years, Tuscany has seen a resurgence of saffron production. In the Middle Ages, Italy was a huge producer of saffron. After the black plague swept thru in the 1300’s and wiped out two thirds of the population in many towns, saffron growing fell off, taken up by North Africa and Spain. Only in Abruzzo, in the province of Aquila, have they been harvesting saffron continually for the past 800 years. When the Tuscan town of San Gimignano decided twenty years ago to start producing saffron again, after a 600 year hiatus, they turned to Aquila to get their bulbs. [Read more…]
Duck eggs and pasta
While there are many different types of pasta in Italy, the most luscious is that made at home with soft “00” flour and fresh whole eggs. The fat of the yolk gives the pasta added elasticity and richness. Throughout Italy, the duck egg is the most prized for making pasta. Hard to come by, duck eggs aren’t for sale, you just have to know someone with a duck. Luckily I know Novelia.
Novelia is my friend from Abruzzo whom I visited recently, and while she doesn’t have a duck, she knows someone who has a duck. It’s all about who you know in Italy. Well, this duck of a friend of a friend is having a pretty good spring and has been producing a lot of eggs. Novelia had been given three of them. If you can get your hands on a duck egg, it is a treasure to be guarded and protected and sometimes shared. Since she could use only two and as she shares my passion for pasta, she also shared her treasure.
I carefully brought the treasure home in a nest I made in the car, double wrapped in aluminum foil and plastic.
I introduced it to the hen eggs and let it lord over them for the night, then the next morning we made pasta.
One large duck egg is equal to about four medium hen eggs. The shell is more compact and heavier than a hen’s, the white is clearer and thinner and the yolk is denser and stickier. Encased in an elastic sack that’s thicker than a hen’s, the yolk yields to the touch before breaking and oozing slowly out of its encasing. The pasta was soft and beautiful, we used about 3 cups of “00” flour and kneaded it until it was satiny and elastic.
Fresh Pasta Dough
Following is a basic recipe for the dough for whole egg pasta, used for making homemade tagliatelli, papparadelle, spaghetti alla chitarra and all stuffed pasta shapes.
1½ cup “00” flour or 1¼ cup all purpose flour
2 large eggs
Use 1 egg for every 2 people you are cooking for. If you can get a duck egg, it should feed six people. Place flour in a bowl or on the board or table, make a well in the center, add the eggs and beat with a fork or two fingers, mixing the yolk and white together and gradually incorporating the flour. When the dough starts to come together, form it into a ball, gathering and scraping up all the loose ends of dough. Knead it until it’s smooth and elastic. If the dough is at all sticky, add additional flour, just enough to keep it from sticky to your hands and the board. The dough should be smooth, satiny and stiffens the more you work with it. Depending on the humidity and the size of the eggs, you may need more or less flour, which can be determined while you work it. When the ball is smooth and elastic, cover with plastic wrap and let it rest at least 10 minutes. Use a pasta machine to elongate and shape the sheets of pasta.
Faella, Pasta of my childhood
When I was young and we went to visit my paternal grandparents in Brooklyn, I would go with my Grandma to make her shopping rounds in the neighborhood. She stopped at the bakery to get the Italian braided bread topped with sesame seeds and at the butcher to get the right cut of meat for the braciole; then we’d go to the deli to pick up locally made Italian salami and mozzarella as well as dry goods brought over from Italy. I remember the package of pasta that she always chose: white paper encasing long spaghetti, simple blue and red letters and a clear plastic window so you could see what kind of pasta you were getting. It wasn’t a brand my mother bought and I’ve never seen it in a store since that time.
Until two years ago when I was walking through Naples, and in the window of a little alimentari, a small shop serving the needs of a typical Napolitano neighborhood, I saw a big display that looked so familiar I stopped dead in my tracks. FAELLA, the white packaging with blue and red letters said, and I recognized it immediately as my grandmother’s favorite pasta. Someone, somewhere, was still making the pasta I ate when I was a kid. I had to find them.
I talked to my friend SabatoAbagnale, the head of Sorrento’s Slow Food chapter. Yes, he said, he knew Faella well, it being one of the original artisan pastas from the nearby town of Gragnano (see a previous blog for more on this pasta town). So Sabato and I made an appointment to visit Faella’s production facility, where they still had in use some of the original machines from the early 1900’s.
We met Mario Faella, the 95 year old son of the original owner, who still came down to the factory every day to oversee operations—not because they needed him, he said, but because he enjoyed being there among the action. He’s a legend, charming and polite. Mario kindly took me on a tour, showing me how they made and dried spaghetti and it felt like coming home.
I wanted to tell him what drew me to his factory, why Faella pasta meant something to me and how happy I was to come to Naples and still see the same brand my grandmother used 50 years ago in New York. So I said, “My grandmother was originally from Montella (a town in the mountains an hour away) but she moved to America, and when I was growing up I remember she always used Faella pasta. I didn’t know it was still around, I only just saw it in a store last week in Naples.”
Mario looked me clearly in the eye, his finger pointing to the heavens, and he started his story: “There was a young man, who was the son of our manager, Domenico Letterese was his name, but he didn’t like working in the factory, he didn’t want to study. And my father said to him ‘Domenico, if you don’t want to study you have to take our pasta to America!’ This was before the war. So Domenico took our pasta on the boat in big trunks and sold it to a man who had a store in Brooklyn, and for years we sold our pasta to that one store in Brooklyn!”
“That’s where my grandmother bought it!” I said excitedly. “She lived in Brooklyn! My grandmother bought your pasta from that store!”
All those years, four degrees of separation between me and this charming old man whom I’d never met before, making delicious pasta at his family’s factory in a small town on the coast of Sorrento for my family to enjoy a taste of the old country in Brooklyn.
And now you can once again get Faella pasta on the shores on America, through www.gustiamo.com. Tell them Gina’s grandma sent you!
Buon Appetito! Gina
Artisan Pasta from Gragnano
One of the most frequent comments I get after teaching a group to make fresh pasta is, “Fresh pasta is so wonderful, I’ll never eat that hard, boxed pasta again!” But fresh pasta, made with soft flour and eggs, is only one note in the symphony of Italian cuisine. Pastasciutta, the dried pasta from southern Italy, made with semolina and water, plays an important part at the Italian table and is in no way second fiddle to pasta from the north.
It seems every year I’m drawn to the pasta factories of the south. I yearn to be in Campania, breathing the sea air in the shadow of Vesuvius. Last summer, on a visit to Naples, I went once again to Gragnano, the pasta town on the bay of Naples. I’ve long been interested in making pasta and studying its history, so when Slow Food friends on the Sorrento coast offered to take me on a tour of some of the artisan pasta factories in the area, I jumped at the chance.
Gragnano, along with neighboring town Torre Annuziata, has been a pasta-making center since the late 1800’s and was designed with pasta in mind. On the banks of a river lined with mills for grinding durum wheat into semolina flour, the main street lies perpendicular to the Sorrento coast to take advantage of the constant sea breezes that were used to dry the strands of pasta. There are many old photos from the early 20th century showing racks and racks of long spaghetti lining the streets and balconies, drying in the open air.
It’s a more hygienic operation these days with the pasta being made and dried indoors.
But the most fascinating thing I saw was the pasta made by hand, like this woman making fusilli rolled by hand on a long metal spoke. Truly beautiful to watch, I have to go back with a video camera!
Buon Appetito!
Gina