Daniele, 61, and Monica Venturi, 55, 'Sfogline' who make pasta with true conviction and dedication.
"SFOLGIA? That's the word we use to describe dough when it's been rolled out flat before we mak it into pasta."
It means ‘leaf’, and by extension ‘puff pastry’. Through to the 60s, women weren’t considered fit for good society unless they knew how to make it.No, seriously. We inherited the shop from our mother after she passed away, and we just keep doing what we always did on Sundays at home in any case: friends and family would come around and we’d make the pasta ourselves. We’re just continuing the tradition in her name. We produce all sorts of pasta: flat pasta, long pasta, round pasta; tagliatelle, spaghettini, tortellini... All made to order. Our ingredients are eggs, flour and water. We don’t put anything else in (which is why our pasta only keeps for 24 hours).
There are four of us here: we have two other sfogline working for us, they’ve been here for 20 years. What do we sell most of? Lots of tortellini, filled with a mince of loin of pork, mortadella, ham, Parmesan, egg, salt, and a pinch of nutmeg; we also make them with seasonal vegetables for vegetarians. We get through around 500 eggs a day and on some days we sell 90 kilograms of pasta. That’s a huge amount when you think that one tortellino weighs around two grams. We work standing up, and we’re here for anything up to ten hours; but you can’t concentrate on making pasta with true dedication if you’re sitting down.”
