Inspired by Italy’s grandmothers, a new generation of chefs has discovered the joys of making pasta from scratch. Now it’s your turn.
By Cinda Chavich
End dive is a cool, buzzy restaurant with an open kitchen and cocktail bar. But there’s another side to this locavore haunt. Or shall I say, another layer?
For while the chefs and bartenders are busy putting on the show upstairs, down below in the basement, Kara Martyn and Lisa Maas are doing something delightful — they’re artfully crafting an amazing array of handmade, artisan pastas.
Like so many chefs these days, Martyn and Maas have taken a deep dive into the world of fresh pasta, following Italian Instagram nonnas (@pastagrannies) and celebrity chefs, and learning all about crafting the traditional shapes you might expect to see in Rome or Bologna.
Their underground pasta-and-bread kitchen is dominated by a massive wooden baking table where every day the pair makes three fresh pasta choices for the restaurant, “a strand pasta, a shaped pasta and a stuffed pasta,” Martyn says, each paired with seasonal sauces created by chef Mat Clarke.
What’s really impressive, though, are the duo’s unhurried and exacting skills — rolling, cutting, filling and forming each individual piece of pasta, like perfect little pieces of edible origami.
They’re very, very good at it — and with a little practice, you can be, too.
Nonna Would Approve
For generations, Italy’s grandmothers — the nonnas — have crafted regional pasta shapes from basic ingredients (flour, water, maybe some eggs), using just a few simple tools. Now they are inspiring a new generation of chefs and home cooks alike, and becoming rock stars among the culinary world’s handmade pasta aficionados.
Among the first to tap into this skill set was Jamie Oliver. In his 2018 cookbook, Jamie Oliver Cooks Italy, the British celebrity chef introduces us to these skilled women cooks, from “the orecchiette nonnas” who make fresh pasta every day in the Itria Valley of Puglia to those making cavatelli, ravioli, gnocchi and agnolotti from scratch in cities and towns across Italy.
Of the new pasta evangelists, the renowned Los Angeles chef Evan Funke (Felix, Funke, Mother Wolf) is perhaps the best-known and most influential. He has spent years travelling and studying in Italy, sussing out these grandmotherly knowledge keepers and sharing their skills in his James Beard Award-winning book American Sfoglino and documentary TV show The Shape of Pasta.
On his quest, Funke works alongside these women, perfecting the Old World techniques of kneading, rolling, filling and shaping artisan pasta.
Funke claims that hand-rolled pasta is superior to that rolled in a hand-cranked pasta machine (another Italian invention). Where the manual machine, with its multiple settings, easily creates an elongated piece of thin, even pasta, perfect for cutting into ribbons or squares for filling, hand-rolling pasta preserves tiny air bubbles in the dough, making it especially light.
He’s inspired chefs like The Courtney Room’s Brian Tesolin, who has set up a corner of his small kitchen for rolling pasta by hand, using a massive 44-inch pin called a mattarello. It was created by woodworker and chef Daniel Ewart in his Mission-based Nonna’s Wood Shop. A former sous chef at Vancouver’s famed Italian restaurant Osteria Savio Volpe, Ewart has expanded his woodworking hobby and COVID project into a business supplying handmade pasta-making tools to the growing cadre of professional and amateur cooks who are diving deep into the world of traditional pasta.
Tesolin uses his big mahogany pin to roll a slab of pasta dough into a thin oval sheet with the same strong, rhythmic motion Funke demonstrates in his YouTube tutorials. He quickly creates a large round, rolling it back onto the mattarello to further stretch it paper thin, then makes a square-ish spaghetti by pressing the pasta over a chitarra, a box that’s tightly strung with metal strings like a guitar. His tool kit also includes a variety of wooden dowels, metal skewers and bronze cutters, designed to roll, press and cut his favourite shapes.
Tonight it’s a giant rotolo, a spiral of pasta rolled around a ricotta-and-green-pea filling. Tomorrow it might be tiny tortellini stuffed with squash, ravioli plump with crabmeat or caramelle filled with lemony ricotta and bathed in sage butter.
TOOLS LIKE NONNA’S
For pasta-making tools that are as beautiful as they are functional, look to Nonna’s Wood Shop in Mission. Owner (and former chef) Dan Ewart makes hand-turned maple, walnut and cherry mattarellos, brass cutters, intricate ravioli moulds (see below) and custom-made corzetti to stamp your pasta with a signature design, all available online.
Simple Ingredients
Making pasta dough is a pretty simple proposition — just a few ingredients combined and kneaded into a stretchy mass that can be rolled thin and shaped. It might be silky, smooth and yellow from fresh eggs, or a rustic flour-and-water dough flecked with whole wheat for chewy little orecchiette or extruded shapes. You can also colour the dough with the bright pink of cooked beets, golden hue of saffron or verdant green of spinach and fresh herbs.
Just remember: With so few ingredients, it’s essential to start with the best quality flour (usually fine-ground “00” although all-purpose will work, too) and fresh eggs.
All the mixing can be done in a food processor or stand mixer. But traditionally, the flour is piled on a work surface and a deep well is pressed into the centre, where you’ll corral the eggs. Then you’ll slowly bring in the flour from the edges with your fingers (or a fork), until you have a crumbly mass that can be kneaded into a smooth ball. Wrap it and rest it for at least half an hour to let the gluten relax, and you’re ready to roll.
Some pasta makers add salt and a splash of water to their egg dough, even a little olive oil. Some use only egg yolks, while others whole eggs. Some stick to the Italian 00 flour, while others mix 00, all-purpose, semolina and even freshly ground whole-grain wheat flour. It’s fine to experiment.
There are more than 300 different shapes of pasta to master — long, short, shaped, stuffed — and only lots of practice makes perfect when you’re committed to learning the old ways perfected by generations of Italian grandmothers.
And though there are myriad classic sauces, from meaty ragus to herbaceous pesto, the pasta itself is the star. Try simply drizzling boiled fresh pasta with brown butter or olive oil, and a bit of pepper or Parmesan.
Elegant Repetition
Back at end dive, Martyn uses Anita’s Organic Mill 00 flour with whole eggs for her basic egg dough recipe and, when she needs a firmer dough for making orecchiette or extruded pasta, freshly milled Nootka Rose wheat flour from Metchosin, along with water and a splash of olive oil.
Fillings for ravioli, tortelli and tortellini start with ricotta and/or puréed vegetables, she says. A simple one would be ricotta and lemon zest for tortelli, though today Maas is piping a deep green purée of cheese with wild nettles.
“We don’t really have a ‘recipe,’ but usually sauté onions, garlic and food process it with anything (ricotta, sweet potato, squash) as long as the filling is a good consistency and not too wet,” she says, “and then you can just season it to taste.”
While Martyn attaches her Torchio B to the table (an Italian-made contraption for extruding fresh spaghetti and other shapes through bronze dies), Maas is busy cranking a piece of golden egg-based dough through a rolling machine until it’s thin enough to see the woodgrain of her work table.
She quickly glides an expandable, five-headed stainless steel pastry cutter along its length to cut perfect strips, then perfect squares. Each is then quickly rolled around a wooden dowel and over a ridged paddle to create tiny, hollow garganelli. She repeats the process dozens of times.
It’s the same with the squares. She dabs each with a nettle mixture, folds a corner over the filling, then pinches the pasta shut to form perfect little pockets of tortelli with “bat wings.”
The work is an exercise in smooth, elegant repetition, a dance that’s both precise and meditative. They never tire of it — and neither do we.
Pasta At Home
If you plan to make pasta from scratch, you will need just a few quality ingredients: flour, eggs, salt, maybe some water or olive oil. While all-purpose flour will work, the pros prefer to use finely milled “00” flour. For a Canadian-grown, milled-in-B.C. version, try Anita’s Organic Mill.
You will also need a handful of tools. Unless you are using a hand-cranked pasta maker, a rolling pin called a mattarello and a sharp brass cutting wheel are essential, while dowels or brass rods (ferretto), a ridged board (for rolling garganelli or cavatelli) and piping bags for fillings are also handy.
However, if you want to serve pasta for dinner but don’t have the time or inclination to make your own, here are a few locally produced products:
• Try the dried handmade pasta, made with freshly milled organic durum, from chef Massimo Buggini at Triestina Pasta & Provisions. Options range from hand-cut herb pappardelle to bronze-die-extruded shapes, sold in their kitchen shop in Saanichton or at local farmer’s markets.
• Cowichan Pasta Company also makes dried pasta from stone-ground B.C. grains, as well as frozen ravioli stuffed with fillings such as smoked cheese, venison and chanterelle or Dungeness crab and squash. Find them at select local markets.
• At La Pasta La Pizza in the Victoria Public Market, find classic frozen or dried pasta and sauces, including lasagna, spaghetti with meatballs, seafood fettuccine and butternut squash gnocchi, all available to go.
Green Ricotta Ravioli
There are dozens of different types of filled pasta shapes, but one of the easiest to master is ravioli or tortelli, the earliest known stuffed Italian pasta. Ravioli may be round or square, bite-sized or larger, and there are many ways to form and fill them. A filling made with ricotta and Parmesan, or one that starts with mashed potato or squash, is typical, as is one that leans on green vegetables and herbs. See below for alternative filling ideas.
Filling:
- 1 lb mixed fresh greens (spinach, chard, arugula, nettles, etc.)
- 2 to 3 Tbsp chopped fresh herbs (basil, mint, parsley)
- 2 cups ricotta cheese
- 2 eggs, beaten
- 1 cup grated Parmesan
- 2 tsp salt
- Pinch of nutmeg or white pepper
Assembly:
- Fresh pasta dough (see recipe below)
- Salt and water as needed
- Olive oil or browned butter, to serve
- Grated Parmesan, to serve
Make the filling: Place the greens in a large pot of boiling, salted water and cook for 5 minutes. Drain and quickly cool in ice water, then drain again, and squeeze out excess moisture. Combine greens with remaining ingredients in food processor and pulse to create a coarse purée. Taste and add additional Parmesan if desired. (See below for alternative fillings if you want to experiment.)
Place filling in a piping bag or use a teaspoon to portion filling when making ravioli.
Make the pasta dough: Roll the dough into long, thin sheets, about 4 inches wide. Cut into 3- to 4-inch squares (or circles) and pipe filling into the centre of each. Spritz pasta lightly with water, top with a second square (or round) of pasta and seal the edges, squeezing out any air pockets and pressing tightly.
Repeat as needed.
Alternatively, dot the length of the sheet with mounds of filling, an inch or two apart (and an inch from the edge). Spritz lightly with water, then top with a second sheet of pasta. Press around the filling to remove air and seal the ravioli, then cut into squares with a pasta wheel or into rounds with a stamp or cookie cutter.
Make sure the edges are well sealed, pressing again with fingers or a fork. Set ravioli on a floured board and keep covered with a clean cloth as they are filled.
Cook ravioli in a large pot of salted boiling water until tender, 2 to 3 minutes, then drain. Place ravioli on individual plates and drizzle with olive oil or browned butter and sprinkle with Parmesan to serve.
Makes 24 to 30 ravioli, enough for 4 people
Filling Variations
Feeling like trying something different? Here are the ingredients for three other fillings to use in ravioli or other stuffed pasta. Just follow the method in the main recipe.
- Cheese: 2 cups ricotta, 2 eggs, 1 cup shredded Parmesan, 2 Tbsp chopped herbs, salt and pepper to taste.
- Gorgonzola: 1 cup ricotta, 1 cup gorgonzola, 2 eggs, ½ cup shredded Parmesan, salt, pepper and a pinch of nutmeg.
- Potato: Start with 2 cups of very smooth mashed potatoes flavoured with salt, butter and cream. Then add anything else you like: shredded Parmesan and chopped herbs; cooked crabmeat with lemon zest; minced prosciutto; sautéed minced mushrooms with caramelized onion; roasted garlic and leek.
Kara’s Perfect Pasta Dough
At end dive restaurant, Kara Martyn’s basic egg pasta is made with finely milled “00” wheat flour and whole eggs. She notes that you can mix the dough by hand or in the food processor.
- 1 lb “00” flour (such as Anita’s Organic Mill)
- Pinch of salt
- 5 whole free-range eggs
To make pasta dough in a food processor: Combine the flour and salt in the bowl of a food processor and pulse once or twice until mixed. Lightly beat the eggs and add them to the food processor, pulse the mixture just until the mixture clumps together. Remove the dough, pat it into a ball with your hands and place it on a lightly floured cutting board. Knead the dough for 1 to 2 minutes until it is smooth and elastic.
To make pasta dough by hand: Mix the flour and salt together, then dump it on your work surface and make a well in the centre with a high-rimmed glass to hold the eggs. Break the eggs into the well, beat with a fork and use the fork to gradually draw the flour into the middle until it’s all incorporated.
Knead dough by hand for 10 minutes, using a traditional kneading motion. Press and stretch the dough away with the heel of your hand, then turn and press away again, until you have a nice, smooth, elastic dough. If you push your finger into the dough slightly, it should spring back slowly.
In either case, if the dough is too sticky to knead, add a little more flour a teaspoon at a time until you reach your preferred consistency. If it’s too dry, spritz lightly with water.
Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and let it rest for 30 to 60 minutes. Once rested, the dough is ready to roll by hand or machine.
Roll pasta until it is thin and translucent, then, using a pastry cutter or an attachment on a pasta-rolling machine, cut it into strands or squares to make any number of formed or filled shapes. There are literally hundreds of shapes to choose from, so have fun experimenting.
Dust the pasta lightly with semolina flour so it doesn’t stick together and cover with a cloth so it doesn’t dry out. You can also loosely gather longer noodles into nests or hang them on a drying rack.
To cook fresh pasta: Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat, then add the pasta. Stir it gently so the pasta doesn’t stick together and cook to al dente — this may only take a minute or two as fresh pasta cooks much faster than dried. Strain, toss with the sauce of your choice and serve immediately.
Serves 4 to 6