How to make real Bolognese pasta, according to two pasta legends

RTÉ News​

7 days ago

When you hear the words 'Italian nonnas', your first thought might be of stooped women with gnarled hands pottering busily around a homely kitchen.
Walking into meet renowned Italian pasta cooks Monica and Daniela Venturi, however, I was met with a far more glamorous version, one that embodies the storied history of pasta, women and Italy.
Sisters by birth, coworkers by calling, Monica and Daniela Venturi are the minds and hands behind Le Sfogline, Bologna's celebrated fresh egg pasta shop, where they handmake what are largely considered the best tortellini in the region.
With their coiffed hair, tanned skin and elegant makeup, they've become dazzling representatives for artisanal Italian cooking. "Our friend tells us we are the Samurai Of Le Sfogline", Daniela says. "Because it's the same every day, but we try to make it better every day."
This July, they're stepping out of their all-female pasta shop to bring their Italian hospitality to Ireland with Nonna's Kitchen, an Italian pop-up in The Fumbally Stables in collaboration with Birra Moretti.
The three-room pop-up will feature hands-on pasta-making lessons, family-style dining and, of course, delicious drinks.
Womanhood, and the recent history of Italian womanhood, is written into their DNA as guardians of one of the country's most cherished arts. Le Sfogline, they tell me, is the tradition whereby women would "stay at home and prepare the meals for the family, so a housewife". "In that period, men were going out for working", Monica says.
"If a woman wasn't able to be a cook, she didn't find a man. She couldn't be married."
How could a man tell from looking at a woman if she was a good cook, I asked? "Sometimes the man guessed", Monica deadpans. "It comes that he's so in love that at the beginning. After, [he thinks], 'you don't know how to make a dish of spaghetti.'"
The 1968 movement, or Sessantotto as it was called in Italy, challenged this, as the far-reaching movement questioned capitalist and patriarchal systems, as it did in France and beyond. That said, some things die hard: Monica's husband still doesn't know how to turn on the cooker, she says.
"We've been living together for 20 years, but he doesn't know how to light the cooker, the fire. Luckily, there's the air fryer."
Cooking together and sharing food is as central to Italian life now as it always has been, the sisters say. Sharing a meal is cherished, and missing the chance to do that is a loss.
"The ritual to us is keeping together, sharing a good food", Monica says. "The goal is preparing good food for the people you love. For 50 years, we stayed for the weekends in a house owned by our relatives. Every Sunday, 20 people, more or less. Every Sunday, the ritual was to serve food for 15 to 25 people. Some friends, many relatives."
But times change. Monica says that the more realistic priority now is to eat together at weekends.
"For example, in December, my husband is always alone eating because I really spend 20, 22 hours a day in the shop. Luckily, I live 10 metres from the shop. I don't see a coat because I always go in and out of. But I cannot spend the time with him, dining with him, because I'm working. And I'm really sad for this.
"That's why we try to gather together during the weekends, meet friends. Our age is not disco, but eating, drinking beer."
In this sense, the Nonnas feel a kinship with the Irish, making this pop-up a perfect opportunity to celebrate our similarities.
"We have to show to a lot of people how to make tortellini, how to make our traditions. And I think that this is the right place because I feel Dubliners, Irish people, [are] almost like us. Very friendly, open to the ideas, open to everything. Very cute."
She adds: "That's why I like during the summer having lessons with tourists, especially I prefer tourists instead of Italians. Because Italians are [like], 'I know, I know', and I don't know anything. They're not open to [it]. But the tourist that comes at our shop is because they wanted to stay there."
So what are the necessary steps for making great pasta?
"Starting with the quality. To make, for example, a good dough, it's really difficult because only in Bologna, you will find the eggs very yellow", Monica explains, noting how the local chickens are fed corn which produces the yellow yolk.
"This means that you can have a yellow dough. It is very wonderful when you stretch it and you see this big sun over you. It's great."
Sitting across from two Bolognese pasta masters, I couldn't help but ask: what is the authentic way to make pasta Bolognese?
"You would never combine pasta all'uovo, especially spaghetti, with ragu", was their simple answer. "Never. It's very wrong, and we could punch you."
Point taken.
"Because ragu is a very rich sauce, and it combines very well with tagliatelle. And they mix together the flavour because [in] tagliatelle, the eggs have a flavour. And so it's very combined."
Semolina pasta, the kind that we're most used to, should be kept for dishes with fish or eggs, such as carbonara, they add.
Despite being renowned for their family recipes, the Nonnas aren't precious about safeguarding them. As Monica says, "If someone wants my recipe, I'm not jealous because the ends are the recipe and the heart. You can follow exactly the recipe, but I guess yours will be never the same as mine.
"That's the miracle of food."