Stories of Food & Love from Acri, Calabria

NONNA WISDOM | EPISODE 1

By Gianina Rose

July 15, 2024

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Our first episode starts from the tip of Italy, in the alleys of the old town center of a small village in Calabria where we meet Nonna Rosetta with whom today we will prepare a traditional Calabrian dish, Fusilli con il sugo di Polpette. It is a Saturday morning in June, the sky is clear and the air brisk, Nonna Rosetta is ready to go shopping. Like any self-respecting southern village, there is a small farmers' market in Acri, a place where time seems to stand still, where not only the food is genuine but also the people.

Nonna Rosetta knows all the stands, we move carefully in search of the best ingredients, the first tomatoes of the season, the cherries from Valentina's tree. On Saturdays we shop for groceries throughout the week, there are no 24-hour supermarkets here, there is Valentina's store, Mr. Giuseppe, Mrs. Francesca with her strawberries.

Grandma prefers to buy here and I am excited to go with her. After buying every good thing and having a chat with Grandma's friends, we moved on to another market, this one a little less typical but still a peculiarity of the villages on Saturday mornings. The stands here are different, there are not only fruits and vegetables, but also those who sell hand-embroidered tablecloths salvaged from old trunks, those who still practice traditional crafts.

In this village time seems to stand still, even we, between stalls, an anecdote and a greeting we paused and grandma wants to hurry home to cook! Today she promised to teach me how to make “Fusilli al ferretto," a homemade pasta of Calabrian origins, a tradition that is now being lost.

When you begin cooking you can't not make coffee and while grandma peels tomatoes for the sauce I put the moka on the stove. Cooking together is one of my favorite things, in a world where everything goes fast being revolutionary means slowing down rather than speeding up, valuing these moments when time stands still, if only for an hour.

Nonna Rosetta's house is the typical Southern grandmother's house, everything in order, the photos of the grandchildren on the shelves, their milestones, the fruit in the centerpiece, the doilies on the furniture, the smell of soffritto and laundry. And it is in this setting that today we prepare Fusilli al sugo with meatballs.

1. Prepare Pasta Ingredients/Tools

400 g of 00 flour (or 200 g of semolina and 200 g of 00 flour)
2 eggs
Tepid water
Pastry board
Ferretto

2. Make Pasta Dough

We add the tepid water and eggs to the flour and start mixing to obtain a homogeneous dough, a soft but not sticky loaf. Once a homogeneous dough ball is obtained, we knead for a moment on a wooden board to obtain an elastic dough. Let it rest for half an hour, keeping the dough covered with a dishtowel.

3. Roll Fusilli

After the half hour has passed, we work on the floured pastry board to prepare our fusilli. We divide the loaf into smaller pieces. From each piece we make strings. We thin the strings, turning them on the floured pastry board. We cut out pieces of about 6-7 cm. Now all we have to do is pass the strings of dough back over the ferretto. We flour the dough first, twist it to the ferretto and put light pressure on the ferretto, then gently slide the fusilli out of the ferretto.

Nonna, who has been preparing this recipe for more than sixty years, finds no difficulty, when she had already finished all her dough I was still trying to make the first one, but between a gentle word and a story I learned this recipe. To season this pasta we usually use a full-textured sauce, accompanied with some inevitable meatballs, which cooks while we finish preparing the fusilli.

4. Prepare Meatball Ingredients

500 g minced veal meat (2 cups)
2 eggs
150 g grated parmesan cheese (3/5 cup)
Bread crumbs (3 slices of cassette bread)
Finely chopped parsley
1 clove of garlic
Tomato paste 700 gr (3 cups)
Salt, Pepper and Oil

5. Combine Meatball Mixture

The first step is to soak the cassette bread deprived of the edges in a little water for a few minutes. After that you need to squeeze it very well and put it in a bowl with the ground meat. The simplicity of this recipe lies in the fact that all the ingredients can be added in no particular order! We then proceed by adding the two eggs, grated Parmesan cheese, finely chopped parsley, salt and pepper to the mixture and mix everything initially with a ladle and then when the mixture has reached more firmness we can use our hands.

6. Form Meatballs

The meatballs should have a definite consistency, not too soft but not too hard either, this compromise gives them their typical softness. If by forming a ball in your hands the dough does not stick to the palm of your hand then they are ready! To give the characteristic shape of the meatballs we proceed by putting some oil on the palms, in this way forming the meatball will not stick thanks to the oil that will make it perfectly round.

7. Pan Fry Meatballs

As soon as all the meatballs are ready, heat the oil in a nonstick pan and, when it is hot, lay the meatballs in it, frying them on both sides for a couple of minutes.

8. Add Meatballs to Sauce

The meatballs will need to be cooked in the sauce, so we remove the excess oil and transfer them to a larger pot with the tomato paste and garlic clove. With the lid half-closed the meatballs will cook about 45 minutes on a low flame, if the sauce shrinks too much add a little water, it should be thick but not too thick, light but also full-bodied.

9. Cook Fusilli

Once the sauce is ready and the pasta is finished, we cook the fusilli in plenty of water, previously salted. We season the fusilli with the sauce, a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese and toast with our red wine.

As in every Calabrian table, grandma also put hot chili pepper and a lot of homemade bread to make the scarpetta.

Our story today ends with a toast and a tune played by Maestro Pino, a friend of Nonna Rosetta's, who after lunch presents us with a song played on a hand-built instrument, the "Mandola."

See you in the next story, with love, Nonna Rosetta.

Words and photography by Gianina Rose @la.nina.rose and Beatrice Manglaviti @atlantiseye

The market

Stories of Food & Love from Acri, Calabria