Tuscan Traditions: Pasta Making

I love getting my hands dirty. Today’s pleasure, making fresh pasta was particularly special.

It’s day 4 at Potentino. There is a spear of sunshine coming through the kitchen. This morning, Rachel Roddy, food enthusiast and writer behind An A to Z in Pasta, and she  is telling us about how pasta making is all about child's play.

She is cheery. A tall, curly hair, freckled skin, British lady who has spent 16 years of her life in Rome. She is a striking presence at the castle. Her speech is quick, with bursts of Italian. 

She is showing us the flour divide between Northern and Southern Italy. Another rivalry between North and South. Flour is the key ingredient for pasta making. Puglia, Calabria, Campania, they go for semolina flour, or durum wheat flour. A granular, sandy, fine ingredient that slips through your fingers. On the contrary, Toscana, Lombardia, Veneto, they use a velvety, teddy bear like soft flour, the regular all purpose wheat flour we all know.

It really is simple. You add 200 gr of either flour and 100 ml of water for a semolina flour recipe (or 2 eggs for a soft flour recipe), and you’ve got all the ingredients for pasta for two. As Rachel shows us how to proceed, she tells us how her family likes to think of the process, a flour mountain that turns into a volcano, with the water and/ or the eggs as craters. Mix all the ingredients up, and suddenly you find you have playdough in your hands. 

What follows isn’t quite as much fun, but you need to knead. 10 minutes of pushing down, pulling out, folding and turning in. Thankfully, I like to do hands-on work.

The dough, a soft but sturdy ball with all the tenderness of a baby's bottom, is now ready to rest. 30 minutes are key for the gnoccho (the dough) to rise, and as I listen to others talk about what pasta shapes will be made for lunch, I take a moment to observe my surroundings. 

We are in a kitchen that is more than 700 years old. Maids, servers, owners and friends, guests and volunteers have passed through this kitchen over the centuries, and have made this little universe their own. There’s a wooden cabinet that particularly draws my attention, full of mix & match glass and kitchenware. I made a note to myself to speak to Charlotte, the owner of Potentino, to tell me more about this room.

The timer is ringing. It’s time to shape the pasta. We practice our beginner skills by exploring the pleasures of forms, from classics such as the orecchiette (little ears) to experimental freeform. We are quickly drawn back from pleasure to work though, as lunch time is getting closer and today we are cooking for 20 people. 

The shape of choice for lunch is pici. To get this shape, we pinch about 2-3 inches of the dough and turn it into a thick, long and fat hand-rolled type of spaghetti. This shape, Rachel tells us, originated in Siena, Tuscany. All of a sudden, I am transported to traditions in the valley. Traditions of wine making, growing vegetables without fertilizers, weaving wool from the neighboring sheep farm. Traditions that Potentino is resolutely trying to keep alive. 

Our pasta making work is done, and as we wait for the pici to cook, we move from the kitchen to the dining room. There’s an air of excitement and anticipation (and hunger) in the room. We are all hoping the result of our hard work will be good. Is it going to taste as good as it felt when we were preparing it? Will our beginners pasta survive the cooking? Will everybody like it?

Sometimes actions speak louder than words and as guests have a bite of the fresh pasta, paired with roasted tomatoes passata, olive oil and basil, I only need to see their faces to know the answer. Delicioso! 

The hard work we put in this morning has been a success. One that I am hoping to repeat at home. And I hope you will, too. 

TCB xx

Potentino, a walk through living traditions

´Italy has given me so much, I ought to do the same’, Charlotte tells me.

She is the owner of Castello di Potentino, an ancient castle dating from the 10th century and hidden within Monte Amiato, in the heart of the Tuscan Valley. 

It was only 30 minutes since I met Charlotte that I knew she was a strong and determined woman. A tall, straight short hair lady with striking blue eye glasses. Very Italian style I would say, despite herself being British. It’s been 30 years since she moved to Italy and she’s been cultivating and nurturing the lay of the Tuscan land ever since.

‘We had a previous home, but we sold it and bought this ruined castle’. It is clear this medieval beast is her biggest passion and personal project. A once crumbled castle now turned into a living palace to restore Etruscan traditions. I couldn’t think of a better idea. 

Potentino is special. 

We arrived here on a dark and eerie night, and we thought we had got lost. Google Drive was telling us we were a minute away from our destination, but there were no signs of Potentino in any direction. Suddenly, there it was. Low lid yet showing its grandeur, rustic stone walls facing us. Cersei and Otto, the house dogs, welcomed us at the entrance and shortly after, somebody opened the door. Hello, you found us! 

We were greeted, and our story began.  

As we walk into this long-lived estate, I get quickly captivated by the amount of art, books and crockery laying around. One can tell that many have passed through Potentino, and the house still captures its passing stories. Publishers, artists, filmmakers and musicians, they all have lived and left a piece of history here. 

Traditions of wine and olive oil making, which were common in the area since almost 3000 years ago, are also alive at Potentino. I’ve been told that thanks to the golden valley that is Monte Amiato, we are in a highly fertile, volcanic area, which has gifted Potentino with a variety of wines. 

One evening before dinner, we are lucky to get a VIP pass. We tried not one but eight different wines from Charlotte’s latest batch. From easy drinking pinot noir rose to dense red San Giovese. It was a kaleidoscopic experience.

And it doesn’t end here, Charlotte is determined to keep the Etruscan heritage alive and she is set on being kind to the planet whilst at it, aiming for zero waste and respecting the local community. 

As days go by in this fairy tale fortress, we experience farmers from the neighboring town make cheese in front of us, cheese that we eat for lunch; polyphonic singers enjoying Potentino wine whilst chanting Etruscan songs and songs from World War I, and acclaimed food writers teaching us how to make and write about pasta and the joys of life. We are enduring the beauty of Tuscany and its unconventional history.

As I write to you, the sun is shining and my body feels heavy, despite a light breeze passing through. I can feel my soft skin burning, and the seasons changing. The leaves are dancing like shining diamonds changing color under a beaming light. Potentino is in the background, and I already feel part of its tales, too.