Man Cannot Live by Bread Alone

Today’s topic is in two parts: Wine and Pasta, classic Abruzzo pasta.

WINE

As some of you may know, Nancy and John love their wine---sometimes to a fault, but hey we’re in Italy and Italy is the major producer of wine in the world (4,250,000 liters per year vs. France, which produces 3,641,900 liters per year). But we’re not here to quibble, we’re in Italy so that’s what we’re drinking.

When we arrived in Pescara, we went to the grocery store for “provisions” and since there was a wine section, we decided to buy a few bottles. We bought a wine that we recognized called Montepulciano D’Abruzzo, not a great wine but an okay everyday wine. You might recognize the bottle with its distinctive little piece of wood tied to the front.

In the US this wine sells for about $18 a bottle, but here in Abruzzo, where it is produced, it’s a reasonable 7€.

On the way home we came across a real wine store (of sorts). When we walked into the shop, it felt like we were approaching a gas station. There were a number of tanks, tubes, and pumps where you can fill 5-liter plastic bottles with different types of local wines. Since we didn’t have our own bottle(s), we opted to buy an already filled 5-liter jug of Primativo, a genetic cousin of California Zinfandel, a full-bodied red wine tasting of blueberry and blackberry, and very high in alcohol. The woman manning the pumps made sure to point out the 14% alcohol level on the label.

I sent my brother, who runs a wine school, the pictures (above) of the tanks, tubes, and pumps, his comment was,”…so many OSHA violations! Unsecured gas tanks!” But he went on to say, “I love the idea!”

PASTA

The second topic for today is pasta, specifically a pasta from Abruzzo, known as spaghetti alla chitarra.

Spaghetti chitarra is the pasta John’s maternal grandmother, Theresa Falcone D’Antonio, would make on Sundays. In her Italian-American kitchen, it was acceptable to serve store-bought dry pasta on Thursday, but Sunday was for homemade chitarra and a slow cooked pasta sauce. She’d start the sauce on Sunday morning (before church) and let it simmer on the gas stove in the basement kitchen until Sunday’s late lunch.

Chitarra is a variety of egg pasta typical of the Abruzzo region that is cut from a square of rolled dough rather than extruded through a die. The name comes from the tool (the so-called chitarra, literally “guitar.”) The tool gives the pasta its name, shape, and porous texture that allows the sauce to adhere well to the pasta itself. [Wikipedia]

Strangely enough, we found a traditional chitarra guitar in a cabinet of our Airbnb (See picture above). And so, John decided to make spaghetti chitarra for Friday night dinner. On Thursday he made the dough and allowed it to sit for 24 hours in a plastic bag to form the gluten (sorry Kurt, we gotta have that gluten). On Friday he rolled out the dough, laid it on the guitar, and using a rolling pin, rolled and pressed until the strings of the guitar cut the individual stands of pasta.

The first picture shows the rolled out dough on the guitar with a rolling pin. The middle picture shows the dough after a few rolls of the pin (notice that the guitar wires can be seen between the individual strands of dough. The last picture shows the individual stands of pasta that have dropped through the guitar strings to the bottom of the guitar...ready to dry before cooking.

He then laid the pasta on towels on the dining room table (in the warm sunshine) to dry out. We whipped up a quick ragu and viola! a traditional Abruzzo specialty, spaghetti alla chitarra.

So yes, man cannot live by bread alone…it also takes copious amounts of wine and excellent pasta!