Making Homemade Pasta in Rome

Back in the fall, Brad and I took a trip up to the big mall at the north end of Rome and bought a cheap pasta maker (for €20, I recall), along with other household items. 

It didn’t get much use at first (as Brad warned me it wouldn’t). But after Christmas, when our other holiday visitors had gone home, Lily stayed on and was joined by her boyfriend, Luke. For a few days over Epiphany, a friend theirs, Sidney, now living in Spain, also came up for the weekend. 

Lily and Sidney at Ostia Antica ruins near Rome (January 2017)

They are a fun-loving group and currently in a craze for time-lapse videos. While here, they got the notion to make pasta, so the pasta machine was finally put to use and the process captured on video!

In that first pasta-making session, we made fettuccine and served it with a simple tomato sauce. Sidney had the smart idea of leaning her camera against the back wall of the counter .... 

A few weeks later, Lily, Luke, Brad and I took a short trip to Florence. On advice of one of their friends, we went to Trattoria Quattro Leoni where they serve a pear-stuffed fiochetti (little pasta packages) served in a creamy cheese sauce with pieces of steamed asparagus. 

Brad's veal chop was pretty good too (una costoletta buona e bella entrambe).

And, apropos of nothing, the bottle of water we ordered there was exceptionally bubbly.

Of course, we had to try fiochetti when we got home:

The results were fantastic: Lily has an eye (and the hands) for these things. We served it as the first course for dinner at the house with friends we have met here, Basha Hicks and her daughter, Emelia. 

Another evening, when Lily and Luke were in Amsterdam for a few days, 

Brad and I hosted dinner at the house for some new Seattle friends now living in Rome: Rose and Wayne Wentz (who have been living in Rome for over 3 years and have no definite plans to return, although their son just had their first grandchild) and Patty and Pete Farmer (who just moved here in January on a one year visa). I used my new "raviolostamp" to make little ravioli served in sage butter stuffed with onion and carrot. 

Definitely took some time to master it and the edges of the ravioli were a bit too thick (and therefore tough) but none were left on peoples' plates. Brad also made breaded chicken breast stuffed with mozzarella and bresaola (thinly sliced dry cured beef). We had so much fun, we forgot to take photos of the food... but it was Wayne's birthday and Patty got him a bottle of gin, so we got a picture of that ...

Then, after Luke went home to San Francisco (to get ready to lead a three month trip of recent high school grads around Southeast Asia), Lily and I tried our hand at tortellini (also pictured in my St. Brigid's Day post). Not nearly as difficult as we thought they'd be! 

Later, we got a text from Luke with a photo of the pear ravioli he had made with his mom. (He said he wasn't dextrous enough to make fiochetti.) Apparently, one of the first things he did when he arrived home was to buy a pasta machine! So the tradition continues a little bit more ...