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RTÉ News
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- RTÉ News
How to make real Bolognese pasta, according to two pasta legends
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."
Irish Times
01-07-2025
- General
- Irish Times
Pasta the Italian nonna way: ‘Spaghetti alla bolognese does not exist'
'No, no, no!' exclaims an affronted Monica Venturi at the idea that anybody might attempt to pass off spaghetti bolognese as an authentically Italian dish. Her face is stricken at the thought of adding ragù (meat sauce) to spaghetti and then misnaming it, when, as everybody in her hometown of Bologna knows instinctively, 'spaghetti alla bolognese does not exist'. Monica, as a decades-long veteran pasta-maker along with her sister Daniela Venturi, does not invite argument on her specialist subject. In fact, the sisters explain, the real spaghetti alla bolognese is made with tuna, tomato and onion, topped off with fresh parsley. And although tuna is a fish, and Italians generally shy away from cheese on seafood, they like to add parmesan. This is because, says Monica, 'for Bolognesi people, tuna is not a fish'. READ MORE The pasta-making duo are in Dublin as part of a partnership with Birra Moretti which will see them host a two-night pop-up Nonna's Kitchen at the end of July. At home in Bologna, they run a classic pasta shop, Le Sfogline, where they handmake as much as 60kg of fresh pasta on their busiest week. In the pasta business for almost 30 years and both having nonna (grandmother) status, the sisters know everything about how it should be cooked, eaten and enjoyed. For the record, the authentic version of the food Irish people like to call spaghetti bolognese is tagliatelle al ragù, ribbon-shaped pasta with slow-cooked meat sauce. The sisters warn that even if you know this, it's dangerously easy to fall down with the ingredients by using too much of the base mix of celery, carrots and onions. 'You must be aware of this because if you put in too much, it becomes very heavy. And you only taste the three vegetables. This is a mistake I've noticed,' says Monica. Warming to the theme of non-expert pasta gaffes, Monica says the other area where we often tip ourselves into absolute failure is overcooking pasta. Obeying the 'al dente' (literally, to the tooth) rule, where pasta is cooked just to the point of firmness before veering into sogginess, is crucial, the sisters agree. This is especially true for their fresh pasta with eggs, says Daniela. 'It cooks very fast.' Monica (right) and Daniela Venturi in Drury Buildings, Dublin 1. The sisters, who run one of Bologna's most successful pasta shops, have strong feelings on how it should be made and eaten. Photograph: Dan Dennison And then we get to lasagne, or lasagna – the lasagna is a single layer of sheet pasta, while lasagne is the plural. There is disapproval on the sisters' faces when they acknowledge that people in France sometimes eat the dish with a mixed salad, but sheer disbelief when they're told it is generally served with chips in Ireland. News of garlic bread often being heaped on the side as well prompts such uncomfortable laughter that it seems wise to avoid talk of coleslaw. Daily lasagne-maker Daniela, who says she still can't resist sampling her wares after all these years, isn't giving up on us though. She has a key tip on how to handle béchamel, the white sauce used between lasagna layers. 'You don't see béchamel when lasagne is ready to eat,' she says, with Monica adding that the sauce is there 'for keeping lasagne just a little bit softer'. In other words, a little white sauce goes a long way. The bread and butter of their business though is tortellini, the small ring-shaped pasta filled with meat that was historically served by Bolognesi at Christmas but is now sold and eaten all year round. The main rule here is to avoid smothering the golden circles of deliciousness in heavy sauces. In fact, you should probably avoid the sauce altogether, and serve it simply 'in brodo', or broth. This makes sense when you hear of the richness that goes into making the sisters' top-end tortellini: 'Pork loin cooked in butter, mortadella, Parma ham, Parmigiano 36 months old, eggs – it's that rich that you cannot hide with a sauce,' says Monica. However, she does admit to occasionally succumbing to a light sauce involving some grated parmesan, two or three spoons of the traditional broth that accompanies the tortellini and fresh cream, but says 'just a little' is plenty. 'Personally, I don't like to cover something with sauce even if it's good.' She also likes to mop up sauces with bread, believing politeness has no place in such matters. Despite being Bologna's queens of home-made pasta, the Venturi sisters do not scoff at dried pasta, especially with fish, which they say does not combine well with the eggs in fresh pasta. Unsurprisingly though, not every dried pasta passes muster. Both recommend Pasta di Gragnano, which is made by mixing durum wheat grown at the Monti Lattari in southern Italy with the local waters. Where this isn't available, a good rule of thumb, according to Monica, is to go with dried pasta with longer cooking times. In general, she says she is fairly 'straight' when it comes to Italian recipes, believing there's no reason to mess around with them when they are already proven. She shudders at 'terrible' innovations such as adding pineapple to pizza, while Daniela is ashen at the idea of 'pizza with chips'. So, after all these years of making pasta for the people of their native city, do the sisters still eat it every day? 'Oh, yeah,' they reply instantly, with the small qualification that they limit portion sizes to about 200g and avoid 'a huge amount' of sauce. They like to try other foods when travelling however, singling out Ireland's 'wonderful meat' for praise but expressing dismay at paying €4 or more for a coffee in Dublin, when a good cup can still be found for ... wait for it ... €1.30 in Bologna. Birra Moretti's Nonna's Kitchen will take place at Fumbally Stables, Dublin 8, on July 23rd and 24th. Tickets at €30 will be sold on Eventbrite from July 3rd
