Ciao! This weekend the JFRC contingency went on our orientation trip to Umbria. It was absolutely gorgeous there and I fell in love with the town of Spoleto, it was also a weekend of amazing food experiences! I found it amusing that the weekend before the pasta practicum in class, we got to make 'pasta' and see how to make various kinds of cuts. Our first stop during the Umbria trip was to a beautiful farm in the countryside. We got to make 'pasta' without the egg (they didn't want to waste over 200 eggs on fake dough), they gave us each a little bag of flour and a cup of water and set us to work. I've made fresh pasta before, but it had been awhile! It was fun to relearn the technique and watch other try and figure out how to keep the water in the wells they had made. It was also interesting to think that this was the first time most people had made homemade pasta, whereas in Italy making pasta from scratch or getting fresh pasta at a market or store is just a regular occurrence.
We also were able to see how to make various cuts of pasta and how to make ravioli and tortellini. It was amazing to watch how by simply folding the rolled dough the right way and changing the way you cut the dough just slightly could produce completely different shapes of pasta. First the dough was rolled incredibly thin and then folded into layers.
Then the sheet of dough was cut various ways, creating different shapes and sizes of pasta.
With what was left of the dough, we were then shown how ravioli and tortellini are made.
Although it looks simple enough, the technique is quite difficult to master and if the dough isn't right you have a hard time getting the dough to stick together so that the filling won't come out during the cooking process. The woman who demonstrated the pasta making was lightning fast at making perfect tortellini, but when our tour guide tried to make them he found it quite difficult.
It was interesting in the readings from last week and also seeing pasta making in person. Because of the readings, I was better able to understand not only the process of making pasta but also the different types of pasta she was making and what categories they fell into. Although I knew there were many types of pasta, I didn't realize that pasta usually falls into four basic categories (Gnocchi, Lasagne, Tortellini, and Tagliatelle). Nor did I realize that pasta's origin is very much so up in the air, I had always assumed that pasta came from Italy, plain and simple. Who knew that pasta potentially had Arabic roots? In addition, the Corbier reading provided an interesting insight into the way ancient Romans ate that was I found reflected my experience on the farm. Corbier talked about how people ate what they produced and at the farm, we had dishes that included olive oil and legumes, both of which they had produced. Italians both ancient and modern use what is available and local to them, creating dishes that are delicious and also practical.
Ciao for now!
Veni. Vidi. Mangia.
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