Passport & Plate -
Italy | Thursday, March 13, 2014 | 5 photos
Ingredients
3 eggs
3 glasses of flour
some water
chopped tomatoes («Pomita» for example)
salt
pepper
Parmesan (100-150 gr)
garlic
onion
olive oil
green or black olives
How to prepare this recipeOne egg on each glass of flour. The flour has to be of hard types of wheat. So that pasta comes out authentic and healthy. You can always find this type of wheat in a big shop, usually it has an inscription “Ideale per macchine di pasta” which means “Ideal for pasta machines”.
And after you mixed those two ingredients, you start pouring a thin stream of water in there, so that the dough sticks together. And then you put it in a plastic food wrap and leave it in the fridge for at least half an hour.
After that, you roll out the dough. It has to become pretty thin. Then you roll it through the pasta machine to make it very-very flat and you start cutting it to spaghetti with the same pasta machine. It depends on the capacities of a particular pasta machine, what kind of pasta you can make. But I can tell you one thing for sure: the process is very soothing.
If you’re angry, sad, destroyed, depressed – making pasta is the best way to struggle against it. Making dough is quite hard and needs much muscle work – that gives you the possibility to push out all the negative energy you have. And then cutting pasta with the pasta machine makes you feel like a little child playing “kitchen” with toy pasta machine.
After you made your own pasta, it’s up to you what kind of sauce you will make. Or you can leave pasta in the fridge (for maximum 4 days) or in the freezer (it can stay here for a long time).
I prefer the tomato sauce.
To make it you have to fry some garlic and onion in olive oil, then add chopped tomatoes, salt and pepper it and let it all stew for 5-7 minutes. Then cut a bunch of olives and put them there. Stew it for another 2-3 minutes. The sauce is ready. Remember! The best pasta is “al dente” don’t overcook it. And grate 100 -150 gr. of Parmesan cheese, (or you can use any well melting yellow cheese).
Buon appetito!
The story behind this recipeA year ago I was working as an interpreter in “Theatre Maly”. I was working with the most famous Russian actors and also with an Italian theatre director, Stefano De Luca. We were rehearsing one of Eduardo De Filippo’s plays – “Filumena Marturano”. The plot of this play is more known in the world from the film with Mastroianni and Sophia Loren “Marriage Italian Style”.
In the end of the first act, the main character, Filumena, seats at the table with her servant, Rosalia, and eats pasta. The author didn’t give any hints on how to eat it. But Stefano told the actors, that since it all takes place in Naples, and Filumena is a simple woman, coming from lower classes, a prostitute, both she and her servant would have most likely eaten by hand. As a support and example he showed a scene from “Poverty and Nobility”, where the famous Neapolitan actor Totò eats pasta by his hands. And it looks amazing. He takes a whole bunch of spaghetti and stuffs into his mouth and pockets.
Therefore an idea was born: Stefano had to prepare spaghetti for the performance’s premiere.
We all laughed and forgot about it.
A day before the premiere, the performance was suddenly canceled, due to the bad conditions of one of the main actors. It was on a such short notice, that we had to postpone the opening night for 6 months. Everybody was depressed and speechless. As we were leaving, I said to Stefano, “you didn’t even make spaghetti”.
An hour after we were making dough, then rolling it out, and cutting it with the machine. Luckily, theatre has its own kitchen, so the next morning we got there early and prepared the sauce.
When during the rehearsal at the end of the first act Filumena opened the cover and saw real spaghetti, her eyes glittered and she started to laugh. In 2 minutes everybody was laughing, including the staff. And so the last rehearsal turned out great instead of depressing.
