Pasta, Risottos and Polenta

Pasta is the common denominator between the cooking of the coastal, country and mountain regions of the Marche. The pasta is made from hard wheat flour, with sauces made from fish, game, vegetables and truffles.

When we first came to The Walnut Tree we made the pasta by hand. I (Franco) used to go to my mother-in-law’s house to make the pasta; my mother-in-law and I would spend hours making pasta, hanging it from a Victorian clothes drier to dry. Come to think of it, I think we only bought a hand machine because she got rid of the drier. The hand machines were brought out every day first thing in the morning by the two Italian ladies who started to work for us. Now we have a large electric machine which chums out all the shapes and sizes one could possibly wish for. There is still not a machine that makes pasta quite as perfectly as by hand. To eat pasta made by hand is a revelation.