Nonna's Kitchen

On the morning of our last riding day, we stopped at the grandmother's house of one of VBT's guides for a pasta making lesson. "Nonna" is 82 years old and not shy.

She used hard durum wheat. She was adamant that it was not semolina. In fact, semolina (as we know it in America, is an earlier step in the process. In Italy, the coarse stuff we call semolina is ground to finer specifications. This is important because in Puglia they do not use eggs in their pasta - only flour, water, and salt. The hard durum wheat makes a tougher dough to work with.

In any event, Nonna whipped up a batch of pasta dough on a large wooden board. She took out a long wooden rolling pin called a Matterello. remember that my parents had the same set up. The board would come out and, although the memory fades, we would make what I now know as Cavatelli.

Before rolling the dough, she imprinted the sign of the cross on the ball of dough, kissed her hand and raised it to the sky. She told us that she gives thanks to God because everything she has comes from Him. Nonna rolled the dough with exquisite skill pausing to ask us we wanted to try. Then she made Orrechiette (the Pugliese speciality), cavatelli, fusilli, sagne (a twisted noodle) and ravioli in rapid succession. Several of us tried our hands at pasta making with varying levels of succes. Here is a picture of Micah rolling fusilli.

When we left, we told her that we were traveling with our four sons which prompted a wave of excited talk lasting about 30 seconds that our guide could only translate by saying, "She wishes you many good things and blessings." A picture of us with Nonna is at the top right of the blog.