This beautiful woman is Carla Latini who, together with her husband Carlo, makes an extraordinary artisanal pasta, Latini Pasta, in the Marche region.
She was recently interviewed by Uno Mattina, a very popular program on national Italian TV. This is huge! It’s like saying that she was on for 10 minutes with Matt Lauer, on the Today Show! I would have passed out. Well, she was WONDERFUL, a natural, she makes you believe she has been doing this all her life. Wrong, all her life she has been making pasta and she knows everything about good artisanal pasta making!!!
In the interview, Carla describes the characteristics of an artisanal pasta, including the best durum wheats and the slow drying process. Carla says you know you’re cooking an artisanal pasta because right from the boiling pot, you smell a wonderful aroma of freshly baked bread (try to smell the water with an industrial pasta!).
She says that cooking time for pasta on the boxes is only an indication; cooking time should be a question of sentiment, of individual preference. Start tasting the pasta one minute before “official cooking time” and keep checking it, often; when you think it is very al dente according to your sentiment, turn off the fire, add the sauce and the heat of the pot will keep cooking the pasta for a few more seconds.
Carla talks about Senatore Cappelli, a heirloom wheat that was reintroduced by her husband, the agronomist in the family, in the ’60s. Senatore Cappelli has a long sheaf and cannot be worked with modern equipment used by industrial agri-business producers. That’s why it was disappearing. Now it is back, look at the beautiful sheaf that Carla is holding.
Comments are closed.