Fresh, uncooked farfalle pasta made by hand in a NonnaLive class in Palombara Sabina, Italy. Photo / Roberto Salomone, The New York Times
Fresh, uncooked farfalle pasta made by hand in a NonnaLive class in Palombara Sabina, Italy. Photo / Roberto Salomone, The New York Times
John Henderson takes a look at NonnaLive, a company led by Italian grandmothers who are teaching guests how to make traditional pasta
Growing up in rural Italy in the 1990s, Chiara Leone remembers spending Sundays at her grandmother’s. Big sheets of handmade pasta dried on cotton sheets inthe bedroom. The aroma of ragu filled the air. Her grandmother hugged her in an apron, a flour-covered rolling pin in hand.
“Handmade pasta is the symbol of a Sunday lunch with the family,” Leone said. “Now people go to restaurants.”
Leone and her childhood friend Chiara Nicolanti, both 37, and nine grandmothers in the small town of Palombara Sabina are trying to change that. Their company, NonnaLive, has the grandmothers teaching guests the dying art of making pasta by hand up to five times a day, seven days a week.
“I have three grandkids,” said Angela De Paolis, 68, one of the grandmothers, who goes by the nickname Lalla. “One thing I love is instead of putting my grandkids in front of the TV or video game, I make them make pasta with me. I start crying when I see my grandchildren make pasta, and I remember when my grandmother taught me how to make pasta.”
The town of Palombara Sabina, Italy, in the countryside northeast of Rome. Photo / Roberto Salomone, The New York Times
The company began seven years ago after Nicolanti became pregnant. She spent more time with her grandmother Nerina, who often made pasta in front of her. One day Nicolanti took a picture and put it on Facebook with the cheeky caption, “Hey, who wants to cook with Grandma today?”
“The post kind of went viral,” Nicolanti said. “Suddenly everyone was asking me about coming to make pasta with Grandma.”
Some of their first customers were curious chefs whose pasta machines made handmade pasta irrelevant. Then guests came who had learned to make pasta as a child but hadn’t continued. Later they had tourists from around the world. With more and more travellers saying they want authentic experiences on their trips, what could be more Italian than learning to make pasta with actual grandmothers?
These days the women teach about 5000 guests a year in their homes in Palombara Sabina, a hilltop town not far from Rome. They are a top experience on Airbnb for Rome (US$104 per adult/NZ$174). They have expanded to Paris and to other cities in Italy upon request. After every cooking class they receive ovations.
Fresh fettuccine made by hand and ready for boiling water in a NonnaLive class in Palombara Sabina, Italy. Photo / Roberto Salomone, The New York Times
Pasta in Italy can be traced back to the 4th century BC. But it wasn’t until the 17th century when mechanical presses arrived that pasta became part of Italians’ common diet. Much of that pasta was made at home by women using rolling pins. But as Italian society has changed and women gained options outside the home, the practice of making pasta by hand has dwindled.
Today Italians eat an average of 27kg of pasta per person per year, the most in the world. But very little of that is homemade: pasta sales in Italy last year totalled more than US$5.3 billion.
Leone said her mother stopped making pasta in the 1960s. “They missed one generation — our parents’ generation,” in passing down the knowledge, she said.
At the start of a recent class, Leone gave nine tourists from around the US and Spain a quick tour of Palombara Sabina (population 13,000), a collection of narrow, windy cobblestone streets sitting high atop a foothill of the Apennine Mountains 40km north of Rome. Hovering over the town is the 11th-century Castello Savelli, now popular for weddings and with, on a clear day, a killer view all the way to Rome from its watchtower.
Margherita Lucci tosses farfalle pasta with a sauce of olive oil, almonds and crushed garlic during a NonnaLive class in Palombara Sabina, Italy. Photo / Roberto Salomone, The New York Times
After the tour, the group gathered around a long table in the spacious home of Angela Curci, a NonnaLive instructor. Each spot had a rolling board, a special long, thin rolling pin, a dough cutter and ingredients — flour and eggs. Using Leone as a translator, Curci explained that they would make farfalle — bow-tie pasta — and ravioli, then use leftover dough to make fettuccine with fresh tomato sauce.
“One hundred grams of flour per egg,” Curci said. “That’s the portion for one person. If you have eight people for dinner you use 800 grams of flour and eight eggs.”
The instructor Angela Curci helps a student with his rolling technique during a NonnaLive class in Palombara Sabina, Italy. Photo / Roberto Salomone, The New York Times
The process is labour-intensive. The grandmothers use the ancient technique of folding the pasta around the rolling pin, allowing the dough to have a different thickness and consistency. Curci had the students all mix an egg with the flour, knead it into a ball, roll it, smooth it, wrap it around a rolling pin and roll it some more. They then cut the dough into squares and pinched each piece with their thumb and middle finger to form the bow-tie shape. These would be topped with a sauce of olive oil, almonds and crushed garlic.
For the ravioli, dollops of premixed ricotta and spinach were placed on to long strips of dough. The students then folded the dough over the fillings, sealed the edges and cut the strip into squares.
Fresh tomato sauce is ladled on to a bowl of handmade fettuccine during a NonnaLive class in Palombara Sabina, Italy. Photo / Roberto Salomone, The New York Times
Some guests did all this naturally. “It was a lot simpler and less intimidating than I thought it would be,” said Eric Lawhorn, 33, a police officer visiting from Houston.
Others had more dough on their hands than the rolling board.
“Mamma mia!” said Curci, rescuing the batch from one struggling guest. “Watch me.”
It took about two hours to make enough pasta for the group. Curci said it would take her much less time when she doesn’t have to teach.
Catherine Tan, 37, a sociology professor at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, said that during the pandemic, her family would bake together over Zoom. “That was a really nice experience, and this is sort of the next step.”
Chiara Nicolanti (left), a founder of NonnaLive, and Angela Curci, an instructor with the company, which employs Italian grandmothers to teach how to make pasta by hand, in the Italian town of Palombara Sabina. Photo / Roberto Salomone, The New York Times
Whether handmade pasta becomes the norm in Italy again may depend more on changing lifestyles than NonnaLive. But they have made an impact, at least aesthetically.
“I love it,” said Andy Luotto, a noted Italian TV cooking show host who moved from New York to Rome in 1974 and also teaches pasta-making classes. “When I find out a grandmother is doing a demonstration, I’ll go watch her. Maybe I’ll pick up a technique. As long as that exists, there is hope for Italy.”
Checklist
ROME, ITALY
GETTING THERE
Fly from Auckland to Rome with one stopover with Emirates, Qatar Airways, Singapore Airlines and Air New Zealand. The drive time between Rome and Palombara Sabina is about 45 minutes.
