RECIPES 2020 ASTA R N P EC E IA P L I E A S T I · · P I G R A PIGRAMARGHERITA JUST FOUR GOD IS IN SELECTED THINGS THE DETAILS FOR YOU Interview The ultimate tomato sauce 3 fantastic recipes p. 4 p. 8 p. 31 pigra.com 2 pigra.com PIGRA MARGHERITA PIGRA MARGHERITA pigra.com 3 THE 2020 1. 12. PIGRA 2. 13. 3. 14. 4. 15. 16. 5. CATALOGUE 17. 18. 19. 20. 6. IS ABOUT P01 P02 ITALY, PASTA, 7. P03 8. P04 AND OF 9. 10. 11. COURSE, 21. 22. ABOUT OUR PENS! 1. Conchiglie mezzane rigate, 2. Conchiglie piccole rigate, 3. Penne, 4. Pennette , 5. Pennine, 6. Stortini grossi rigati, 7. Stortini mezzani rigati, 8. Stortini rigati, 9. Anelli rigati , 10. Anelli rigati mezzani, 11. Fusilli, 12. Zitoni, Made by 13. Zite, 14. Mezzani, 15. Mezzanelli, 16. Maccaroncelli, 17. Bucatini, 18. Spaghetti, 19. Spaghettini, 20. Vermicelli, Italians P01. La semplice, P02. La formosa, P03. La creativa, P04. La raffinata, 21. Pennoni lisci, 22. Pennoni rigati 4 pigra.com PIGRA MARGHERITA PIGRA MARGHERITA pigra.com 5 JUST FOUR THINGS which means it shouldn’t travel An interview with Luca Maniforti, further than just across town. owner and pasta maker at Where did you learn how to make pasta? Pastificio Quattro Cose, on why I used to spend summers with my grandmother in Pigra, Romagna. She four things are all you need. and my grandfather used to run the local shop there in the centre of the town, selling food, cigarettes, candy for It’s a universal Italian truth that the ning, and we stick to those. This is an the kids, everything. My grandfather best Italian restaurants do a few artisanal business. We supply pasta to died about when I was born, so I never things, and just a few things, very, local families and restaurants, and really met him, but in the summers I very well. If you’re searching for we’ve got a lunch counter. We want to spent every day with my grandmother proof of that rule, stop by Pastificio keep our prices reasonable so the at her house at the edge of the town, Quattro Cose – which means “four people from the neighborhood can pop and nearly every day we’d make fresh things” in Italian – for perhaps the in for a simple lunch. But our business pasta for lunch. most perfect fresh pasta you’ll ever doesn’t scale. If you live in Milan, and find. Located in a small town in you want our pasta, then jump on the Your grandmother taught you Emilia Romagna, the shop now train and come down here. You won’t everything? bustles from morning till night with find our pasta in a supermarket. If you Not at first, she didn’t. Or at least locals buying pasta to take home, don’t want to make the trip, find I wasn’t paying attention. But then one delivery bikes going off to deliver yourself a neighbourhood pasta maker day my mum asked for recipe, for pasta to local restaurants, and a you’re happy with. Fresh pasta is a friend. My mother worked, so she small lunch counter with a line that exactly that, fresh, and what you find never had time to make pasta like can run round the block. I caught the in the supermarket aisles all wrapped that. And I think that was the first time owner and pasta maker, Luca up in plastic just isn’t the same. If it’s I realized that though I’d seen my Maniforti got to be fresh, it’s got to be local, grandmother make fresh pasta a Tell me about your business – it’s a family affair, isn’t it? We like to say we’re just starting up an age-old tradition. The pasta workshop is new, but my wife and I have roots that run deep here. I make the pasta with the other pasta makers, including my wife’s sister, Claudia, and my wife does pretty much everything else – the accounts, advertising and communica- tion, and the paperwork. She studied and worked in marketing for a bit, but then we decided to open the business together. And now we have a baby as well. And a line around the block. Maybe it’s thanks to my wife, but somehow or other word got around (he laughs). It’s true we’ve been growing fast, but that might be because we’re doing something that’s as old as the hills. We’re delighted that everybody loves our pasta, and we can give jobs to some great people, but we’re really cautious about our success as well. Why cautious? Because we’re careful not to overstep our limits. There are certain principles we established right from the begin- Luca Maniforti 6 pigra.com PIGRA MARGHERITA PIGRA MARGHERITA pigra.com 7 ITALIAN PASTA, BY THE NUMBERS What makes pasta, pasta? According to Italian regulations, this is pasta by the numbers. WHAT PASTA ARE YOU MADE OF? Minimum weight, in grams, of the chicken egg (without the shell) per 250g of semolina flour in In Italy if you want to tell somebody 200 pasta labeled pasta all’uovo – egg pasta. you’ve got what it takes, you say di che pasta sono fatto (literally, what Percentage of minimum moisture content in pasta you’re made of). But when it prepackaged fresh pasta. comes to making fresh pasta at 24 home, the pasta result you want Luca Maniforti’s grandmother, Lucia determines the pasta dough – and customer, whether it’s their first time Subcategories of dried pasta: durum wheat ingredients – you start with. hundred times, I couldn’t explain it. So Why did you name your pasta shop or their hundredth, has a fantastic semolina pasta, low-grade durum wheat semolina I took a pen and paper and asked Quattro Cose – “Four Things”? experience eating it. 3 pasta, durum wheat whole meal pasta. Flour my grandmother for the recipe. She It goes back to the same story, that Use semolina flour for a rustic, pro- was super precise, because she’d run recipe that I wrote down from my Lastly, what’s your favourite dish? Pressure, in bar, required to extrude pasta tein-rich pasta. Choose finely milled this shop and had to weigh out flour grandma. There were only four things I spend all day in the kitchen, so my through a machine. Equivalent to roughly 10 times 00 (or your local equivalent), if you and sell stuff by the gram, and she still written on the scrap of paper: flour, favourite meal is pretty much anything 10 Earth’s atmospheric pressure at sea level. want your texture silky and smooth. In used this antique brass scale with water, salt and eggs. They’re like the anybody cooks for me! It’s probably Valtellina in northeastern Lombardy, weights to measure ingredients for her four elements of Italian cooking, and no surprise, but I love simple dishes. My Maximum final percentage of moisture Pizzoccheri is made from cool weather recipes. So I wrote it all down, exactly for pasta that’s all you need to do wife makes the best orecchiette alle content in dried pasta. buckwheat flower. what she said. But she started work- practically everything. cima di rapa (NB: See recipe, p. 36). But 12,5 ing, and I realize that what she’d said, now that we’re cooking for three, I Water and the measurements she’d given me, But you’ve got more than four things have to convince my daughter to like it Average final percentage of moisture content Both fresh orecchiette and dry were just the basics. Because when she on your menu. too! of pasta before drying. varieties like fusilli and strozzapreti started mixing, she kept adding a little That’s true, but not many more. We 35 use only lukewarm water to humidify more flour from the sack, a little more make long pasta, like tagliatelle and the starch in the flour. water, and that original recipe she told tagliolini, short pasta, like capunti and Average percentage of moisture content me transformed into something cavatelli, flat pasta, like sfoglia for in cooked pasta. Eggs organic, and living, as she responded lasagne and finally stuffed pasta, like 62 Tagliatelle, lasagne and stuffed pasta to the humidity of the dough, to the tortellini and ravioli. So that’s four like tortelloni are traditionally made quantity she needed, and more. When kinds of pasta. And you could spend Weight, in grams, of typical serving of with whole eggs. At 90% water, the I gave the recipe to my mother I felt your whole life eating all the dishes dried pasta. white adds moisture and texture, while like I was cheating her. It was like you could create from those four kinds 80 the yolk adds protein, colour and giving somebody an apple core and of pasta. richness. telling them it’s an apple – there was Maximum percentage of soft-wheat flour as part of nothing there, just the skeleton of an Do you experiment with new high grade durum wheat semolina flour in dried Salt idea. But for the rest of my life I’ll recipes? 3 pasta. Iodized table salt is just fine making thank my mum for asking, because I’m pretty wary of novelty. We’re not pasta, whereas sea salt and other that exercise was the moment I trying to reinvent pasta. We don’t want Number of days within which fresh pasta coarse-grained salts could give your suddenly woke up to how much art pasta to be something it’s not.