In This Installment
This installment is made up of two of my favorite flavors this past year and I have one goal: to make dinner easy for you this month. Chances are you’re getting busier and busier and there’s more and more events, dinners, and parties coming your way in the next two months and you won’t have much time to cook let alone go shopping and plan out a menu.
This should make things easier…at least for one night. Folks always say to “add protein” to this basic meal of sauce and noodles, but if you’re like my kids “sauce and noodles” is all you need.
Maybe some parmigiano-reggiano.
Il Mongetto Diavola Pasta Sauce
For years Il Mongetto has been the top contender for my favorite bottled pasta sauce. They have a clean, fresh flavor that I love, with the sweetness of fresh summer tomatoes. Conjured up by the serenely insightful Santopietro family in the shadows of the Italian Alps, these sauces are filled with tomatoes, shallots, celery, carrots, olive oil from Umbrian maker Alfredo Mancianti and salt—and complex, compelling flavors that other sauces only aspire to. It’s great for a quick weekday dinner (which is why you also received pasta in this installment).
The “Diavola” tomato sauce is made with vine ripened tomatoes, carrot, celery, onion, herbs, a bit of chiles and a generous amount of great Umbrian extra virgin olive oil. The extra bite of heat helps your tastebuds push through the richness of the meal and find the flavor on the other side. Simply put: it’s my favorite starting sauce. You can jazz it up any way you’d like (my favorite: add a tin of Ortiz tuna).
Fettucine Paglia & Fieno Pasta from California
Back in 1967, Eduardo Morettoni and his wife Marcella opened up a small restuarant in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge. The legend goes that their frest pasta was so popular they started making extra at home and selling it out of their garage.
Eventually, the pasta became such a big deal that they closed the restaurant and focused on the wholesale production.
It was popular then for the same reason it’s popular now: fresh ingredients, expert care, and time. 60 years later those are still the hallmarks of the Eduardo’s Pasta.
Like all pastas (at least the good ones) low, slow drying is the key to capturing the peak flavor and best texture. First off, let’s look at how larger, more industrial producers make pasta:
- Make the dough in large mixing machines that can handle thousands of pounds of flour at a time.
- Roll out the dough (inside a large machine, of course).
- Squeeze the dough through plastic dies (like that old PlayDoh factory we had as kids).
- Blast the dough with hot air in a short amount of time to “dry” it
- Package, send out of the door.
That whole process will take place inside a big machine and after a few hours and you’ll have thousands of pounds of finished pasta.
Now here’s how they do it at Eduardo’s:
- Mix farm fresh, cage-free eggs with durum semolina wheat flour to make the dough.
- Roll out the dough in large sheets.
- Squeeze the dough through bronze dies, not plastic. This gives the noodle a rougher texture, good for grabbing sauces.
- Gently hang the noodle on drying racks and place into a low temperature walk-in oven (I guess you’d call it an oven) to dry
- 1-2 days later, take the pasta out and package by hand.
A couple of differences there, but two stand out in particular: the bronze dies and the long time to dry. Bronze dies are traditional and made to last for many, many years. They are expensive, but they give the pasta a rough texture when extruded. The plastic dies of industrial producers leave the noodle smooth and shiny with very little texture.
But time is the biggest differenciator. When you look at the industrial production versus Eduardo’s production. I think you start to see why. If it takes Eduardo two days to make a batch of pasta, think how many batches the industrial producer can do in the same amount of time. 15 times more? 20 times more? They’re going to be selling pasta before Eduardo’s is even done making theirs.
But that’s what we’re paying for when we get artisanal pasta. That’s what we’re looking for: slightly nutty, almost bread-like flavor, and a wonderful toothsome bite. Eduardo’s Pasta has been hitting those notes for more than 60 years, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.