Pasta di casa al fuscello
Hrm. It's been a long time since I posted to Ozfoodie and it's not because there hasn't been anything happening or that I haven't been cooking or eating, either. Though, I do confess, we went through a period where we ate out for lunch a lot, and both our waistlines and our wallets confirm what a mistake that proved to be! So it's time to catch up on things and get back on track, in more ways than one.
Easter bread.
A highlight of the last few weeks was a Slow Food Perth pasta-making workshop: "Pasta di casa al fuscello" last Sunday. One of the Slow Food Perth members, Natalina, has had family members visiting her from Calabria in Italy, and they were generous enough to spend a morning sharing their generations-old family recipes and techniques with a houseful of other Slow Food members. Maintaining the traditions of families and regions is integral to the Slow Food philosophy and I felt very privileged to be able to share this particular family's traditions.
It was very interesting and also a lot of fun. We were first shown some traditional Easter bread. Natalina told us that when she was a child, this is what they had for Easter — no Easter Eggs as we know them!
A Slow Food Perth member helps roll out the fuscello.
Then they demonstrated how they make the pasta. Natalina said that in her family, things were done the way they were simply because that's how they'd done it for generations — they weren't always sure why, but it worked for them. She explained that different families all had different ways of doing things, and there was no right or wrong way. The pasta we made that morning contained no egg, but Natalina herself uses egg when she makes this pasta for its properties as a binding agent.
The pasta dough is mixed, kneaded, rolled out into thickish rolls, then one end of the roll is rolled out more thinly while still remaining attached. This thinner sausage of pasta is broken up into pieces that make the individual pieces of pasta. Each small piece was hand-rolled till much longer and thinner, wrapped around thin sticks in barber's pole fashion, then further rolled to spread the pasta up and down the stick, eliminating any gaps. Then with a quick but careful sliding motion, it was removed from the stick and laid out on the table.
Fuscello ready to be cooked.
This continued till the whole batch of pasta (or two, in this case) was used up. Even with a head start of a batch made in advance earlier that morning, and with several helpers from amongst the guests, it took quite a while to make enough for a houseful of people! (Yes, I had a go too!)
The fuscello was much thicker than other types of pasta I've seen and tried, and the texture was really different. With thin pasta, the "feel" of biting through it is vastly different, so this was quite a surprise as I'd never experienced it before.
Fuscello in a traditional pasta sauce with meatballs.
It was served in a ragü with veal and pork meatballs and I quickly got over the initial surprise and savoured and enjoyed it!
We followed on from there with a traditional salad that included salad greens, figs, bresaola and parmesan, with a lovely simple dressing whose ingredients I unfortunately can't remember.
The good news is that the recipes are apparently coming to the Slow Food Perth website soon.
A simple but delicious traditional Italian salad.
In all, it was a fabulous day with some of the loveliest people you could ever hope to meet.
If you're not sure what Slow Food is about and would like to know, this ABC documentary about Slow Food explains it particularly well — sadly only available online for another 25 days or so at the time of writing, but it is well worth tuning in while it's there — it's inspiring and motivating as well as informative. (Hat tip to Matt for the link.)
Posted by Vicki on Sunday, March 21, 2010 at 05:42 PM in Foodie Events and Slow Food.
