gragnano Archives - attheitaliantable.com

October 2, 2012 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

Pasta of Campania

Quick! What are everyone’s two favorite Italian foods??!!

I hear you, I hear you shouting “PIZZA AND PASTA!!!”

Well you can thank the Napolitani for that, because both pizza and pasta originate in Naples and weren’t widely known, eaten or cooked outside of the south until after World War II. American GI’s are credited for increasing the awareness of pizza, but pasta is a different story.

Dried pasta has long been a staple of southern Italy but is a fairly new addition to the northern Italian diet. Northern regions like Tuscany, Lombardy and the Veneto have always relied on bread, polenta and rice for their starches, with fresh egg pasta made on Sundays and holidays. As southern Italians moved north to find jobs in factories after WWII and brought their favorite food staple of dried semolina-based pasta with them, it began to be sold and eaten in the homes of northern Italians as well.

Where two generations ago few Italians north of Rome ate dried pasta, now Italians everywhere don’t feel complete unless they’ve had at least one plate of pasta a day. Large pasta companies like Barilla and DeCecco, among others, opened massive factories in the north to keep up with the demand.

But if you truly want to understand pasta, you must go south to the area around the Bay of Naples.

Gragnano, along with the neighboring town of Torre Annunziata, has been a pasta-making center since the late 1800’s and was designed with pasta in mind. Located on the eastern side of the Bay of Naples under the shadow of a volcano, the constant sea breezes and humidity were ideal for drying pasta. The fertile valley of Vesuvius, with its volcanic soil, was ideal for growing durum wheat, and the fresh water from the mountains combined to produce the perfect pasta. On the banks of a river lined with mills for grinding durum wheat into semolina flour, the streets lie 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 20^th 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 on an artisan scale. Using time honored methods for extruding and drying the pasta, the pasta of Gragnano differs dramatically from modern industrially produced pasta in two important ways: adherence of the sauce and chewiness.

Modern pasta factories use Teflon dies to extrude pasta shapes, which makes the pasta slick, allowing sauce to slide off rather than adhere. The artisan method utilizied in Gragnano uses original bronze dies which are inherently rough, catching the dough and texturing it, which makes the pasta hold onto its sauce better.

The other important difference is the drying time. In modern factories, where time is money, pasta is dried in large ovens for 2-4 hours, depending on the shape and thickness. In Gragnano they understand that long, slow drying results in denser, more elastic pasta, which when cooked has a satisfying chewiness. Drying times can be anywhere from 10 hours to 7 days. Here time isn’t money, it’s quality.

Gragnano has several artisan pasta factories that you can tour to experience first hand the hot and humid environment necessary for making excellent pasta. The valley of Vesuvius is no longer used to grow wheat, they turn to vast fields in Canada for that. But the local water and the pride in Campania’s pasta culture and history combine to offer a product which has no equal in the north.

January 25, 2012 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

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

January 12, 2012 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

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 20^th 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