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Making
Pasta at The Awaiting Table: |
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Let’s come right out and say it: Italy doesn’t eat as much pasta as you might be thinking. And historically, it ate even less. Much less. Most of the North West consumed (and continues to consume) rice as its primary starch, the North East, Polenta and most of Central Italy consumed stale bread under a sauce, treating it more or less the way the rest of the world treats pasta today. Try to find a Tuscan recipe for pasta that goes back further than the advent of television and you’d be in big trouble. And in fact, statistically, you could ask your average Italian grandmothers and she’d remember when pasta came to town, a concept almost painful for most non-Italians to believe, the dish so linked today with the Italian national identity (an equally wily and fragmentary issue). Aside from pockets in the north (Emilia-Romagna, mostly) true pasta culture is in the south, and even today, it’s still the best place to experience the dish. At The Awaiting Table in Lecce, we only consume pasta that we make ourselves, allowing you to tap directly into the historical and cultural continuum of pasta making in Italy. At our school, little has changed. We start with stone-ground organic grains, milled by our trusted miller, a friend of the school. Hard durum wheat, barley and emmer wheat, the ‘browner’ grains, they all produce pasta that is not only healthier, but also highly traditional, Italy’s soul food. Mixed only with water (never the heart-clogging eggs and overly-refined flours, such as in Emilia-Romagna), these pastas remain chewy and satisfying on a level that the softer grains can never achieve.
Depending on the season, you’ll make most if not all of the following: |
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• Le
Orecchiette di Orzo e Grano Duro. Little pasta ‘ears’ much
bigger than other parts of Puglia, darker as well. Made
from 70% hard durum wheat flour and 30% barley flour, usually
dressed with a vegetable based sauce, such as cabbage and
our home-cured pancetta, or cima di rape and zippy peperoncino,
this is the most famous dish of the Salentine Pennisula.
NB. If you want to experience this dish with le cime di
rape, you must come in the colder months! |
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• Minchiareddhi. A vulgarly-named shape, no doubt the grandfather of today’s factory-produced penne. Formed between the hands or on a board, over a long metal needle, minchiareddhi change in length and composition around the peninsula (as does the name itself, spelled and pronounced slightly different in each town. We use the Leccese name, the word ending with its tell-tall local accent). • Le Sagne ‘cannullate di Grano Duro. Thumb-thick ribbons, usually half a metre long, twisted into their tell-tale shape. Often served with la ricotta forte, a bone-jarringly strong, double-fermented cheese, thinned and then passed at the table. • La tria. As part of a brothy, chickpea-based dish, perhaps the most beloved in the Salentine Pennisula. Tria, or le trie, are short ribbons of darker grained pasta, a third of which are fried for the dish, effectively rendering them as crispy and irresistible. To many, this is the best dish of the entire south of Italy. It’s not uncommon for our students to report that they’ve never bought pasta again once returned home from Lecce. Whether that is the case for you or not, making pasta in our little cooking school in Lecce is likely to be the high point of your time in Italy. For many, it’s the most ‘soul satisfying’ dish they’ve ever made. |
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 Our ‘recipe’ for
making fresh pasta. Open
the wine and announce that you’ll pour a glass
for everyone that helps. With an open hand, scoop up as much
semola as you can hold without losing any, one per person,
plus another, placed off to the side. Make a yellow mound in
the centre of a clean work surface, the rougher textured the
better. With an eyeball, add roughly another 25% of either
barley or emmer flour, incorporating them. Form an atoll (or
a really wide-mouthed volcano). Slowly pour tepid water into
your atoll, a little more than you’d think. Slowly, begin
to move the sides of the atoll in towards the centre, careful
to avoid any of the mini-torrents that make for the edge of
your work surface. Work this into a dough, adding flour from
your reserved pile if need be. A good gauge is that an inserted
thumb should come away cleanly. Kneed this for ten minutes,
or two glasses of wine. Form a ball. Take a break. Gossip a
little, if at all possible.
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The Awaiting Table Italian Cooking School offers
cookery courses in Lecce,
Italy. In our Italian
cooking classes, learn
regional pasta, wine, and savory and succulent
dishes. Come be a local:
holidays include visits to vineyards and wineries, markets and olive groves
in season. The perfect vacation for people who want to be immersed in Italian
culture and food.
Learn about
our cooking school programs, our
founder,
the locals you’ll meet and our
accommodations.© 2007-08
The Awaiting Table - All Rights Reserved
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• Cappelletti
Messicani. An intriguing shape formed on the lip of a wine
bottle. Their resemblance to sombreros is uncanny, as their
name would suggest. Typical of the South-Western part of
the Salento (Casarano and Taviano, in particular) these may
be the funnest pasta to make, ever. We tend to make ours with a
lower percentage of the browner flours, allowing us to roll them
thinner, rendering them more delicate. 
Return to your ball. With clean hands begin by squashing your
ball on one side until you form a point, applying your body’s
weight while rolling it. Continue rolling the point until it
becomes a dowel. Roll the dowel until a long strain of dough-
pinkie-thin- extends out from the side of the ball, perhaps
an arm’s length long. Using a non-serrated butter knife,
cut the tip of the pinkie-dowel into a first-pinkie-knuckle
sized piece. With the knife parallel to your torso, squash
this little ball towards your body, nearly smearing it into
the tabletop. It should form almost half a peanut shell shape.
Put the knife down. Invert the little shape by turning it inside
out, until the form is exactly that of an un-extended condom
(circular, thicker towards the edges, thinnest in the centre).
The degree of your smear, the water to flour content, and to
a lesser degree, the surface of the table, should work together
to form a textured surface across the top of your orrechiette.
This surface holds the sauce. Don’t be discouraged. It’s
trickiest shape to make, and a skill you’ll treasure
for as long you eat pasta. And be certain to keep your first
few each batch, which will dry perfectly, keeping for years.
Track your progress. Make them three times and these first
ones will seem made by someone else, such is the curve of learning
fresh pasta.