Pasta

Appears in

Savoie: The Land, People, and Food of the French Alps

Published 1989

About

The self-sustaining family in many a Savoie valley reserved a small field for Manitoba Spring Wheat, which was grown with more or less difficulty, depending on the exposure of the field and the particular weather of the year. The flour made from this wheat was reserved for the making of pasta during the winter months while snow curtailed all outside activities.

One category of pasta, the fides, was purchased at the grocery store and mostly used to thicken broth or light soups for people who were ill; the other types were called grosses pâtes and were homemade. The thickness was never so perfected that one could read the newspaper through the sheet and depended very much on the manual dexterity of the individual pasta-maker. I experienced some pretty thick and hard products during the winter of 1940, when Mélanie made pasta. It was thick all right, and most of the time she overcooked it in what can only be called an uncivilized manner. But many women were able to make taillerins as supple and silky as any professional pasta-maker.