How to Make Homemade Tagliatelle

I keep staring at this photo, seeing that golden tangle of fresh tagliatelle luminous in the afternoon sunlight, and rubbing my eyes. I'm used to seeing a tray like this on our table, for sure, but there's one small difference this time. This time, I'm the one who made that pasta and it's tickling me pink.

Every time I go to Italy, to the little village where my grandfather lived for so many years, our friends there keep us flush in good things to eat: like homemade tagliatelle and a bagful of fresh peaches from Franca, a freshly killed and roasted rabbit from Maria, homemade crescia sfogliata that Eugenia made and stuck in the freezer for later cooking, or a handful of black truffles foraged by Stefania's son Federico and delivered in a paper towel on an afternoon social call.

This year I decide I want to learn to make pasta myself. So one afternoon I sling my camera across my back and set out for Maria's house, walking past the shuttered houses where our neighbors sleep while the sun beats down on the fields around us. The human silence is warm and familiar while the birds swoop above with abandon and cats blink lazily in patches of shade. I've done this walk a hundred, a thousand, times but this year it's suffused with nostalgia and a faint pain grips my heart. I feel like I did twenty years ago, as my sandals gently slap the concrete of the road. The town looks as it did twenty years ago, the same weathered shutters and swaying trees. But so much has changed and no matter how hard I tried to hold on to the way it used to be, I have been forced - I am being forced - to let go.

As I walk, I see former versions of myself, walking alongside me. I see my cousins, racing me up the hill, and our friends, sitting on the curb late at night, thrilled by the possibilities that life holds for us all. I see my whole life so far, reflected in the memories that the hills and valleys around me hold. I see my grandfather, or I try to, but it's hard. His absence is flat and final. He's difficult to conjure.

Down at Maria's, she leads me into a room where she has her pasta station set up. Maria started making fresh pasta at the age of seven, standing on a chair to reach the table, and had to do so every day for years. There's an old wooden board and a long rolling pin, fresh eggs from the chickens outside, and an industrial-sized bag of flour. She measures out a little less than 300 grams of flour and tells me that the flour should take around three eggs, three of her eggs, she cautions, from the chickens outside, not those larger industrial eggs you find at the store.

We make a well of flour on the board, then crack the eggs into the well. The yolks are impossibly orange, they practically glow. I remember making a hole in the fresh eggs we'd get from Maria, and Gina, who lives behind my grandfather's house, as a kid, and sucking the sweet, raw egg through that hole into my mouth as a special treat. Using a fork, Maria shows me how to beat the eggs without breaking the well and then slowly begin to incorporate the flour as I beat until the whole mass comes together as a rough, yellow ball of dough.

Maria instructs me to start kneading that ball of dough, so I do. I knead for several minutes, while she observes my hands silently, then several minutes more, and several minutes after that, too. My shoulders start to tire. I look up at her, but it seems I'm not done yet and I feel a bit fraudulent. When the dough is as smooth and plasticky as Play-Do, when it feels like the underside of your arms, untouched by the sun, that's when it's ready to go.

Maria's technique for rolling out that chubby round of dough into a sheet so thin you can read newspaper through it involves that long rolling pin, the shuffling movement of palms, the slapping and rolling of the dough over the pin and onto the board and onto itself, and then back again. She makes it look so easy, of course, even though it's not, not at all.

We cover the dough with towels and let it rest for a bit. My mother comes down to the house and we talk about old times. I used to hear chickens squawking in the yard outside, but over the years Maria has landscaped her house and the chickens and rabbits are now farther away, removed by a terrace. It's quiet and a fly drones above us. Finally, it's time.

Maria rolls one side of the dough halfway into itself and then rolls the other side halfway into itself. She brings out a long, narrow board that fits snugly onto her tabletop and equips me with a serrated knife. I start to slice, watching the curls of tagliatelle emerge on the other side of the knife, suddenly marveling in the simplicity of the whole thing. Who needs hand-cranked machines or boxes of store-bought noodles? Not me, not anymore.

We say goodbye to Maria but not before I snap her photograph. She's beautiful but acts bashfully, is uncomfortable in front of the lens. We eat the tagliatelle the next night, the last meal I'll have in Italy this year. They're good, delicious even, tender and eggy and sauced with tomatoes and basil from the garden. I wonder if I'll ever make them in New York. If it will be as nice as it was in Maria's kitchen, with her standing behind me, watching.

Comments

[jenny]

wow. I'm just loving your use of text and photos in these italy stories.

as for the pasta-making lesson: too much fun. thanks to you and bill buford (have you read "heat"?) I have developed an almost overwhelming need to try my hand at the stuff.

thanks for sharing your vacation with us!

[Meg]

Lovely post. I've been wanting to start making my own pasta for a while now, and this is the push I needed. Thanks!

[Diana]

What a wonderful post... I love the part about getting the dough to the consistency of the underside of the arm. Good writing... and very inspiring too! I didn't realize you could make pasta without a machine... must get a rolling pin, asap.

[amy]

oh man, that's what i'm making today. PROMISE!

[Melissa]

What a warm and lovely post.

[Lisa]

beautiful photos and prose, as always.

[sixty-five]

I look forward to and treasure all of your posts for the writing, the photography, the recipes. But this one was especially beautiful on every conceivable level. Thank you so much!

[Gayle]

Absolutely beautiful. Please share--what type of flour was used? Thanks!

[Susan at Sticky,Gooey,Creamy,Chewy]

What a lovely and thoughtful post! I can relate so well to your story, because it is so much like my own. My family, on both sides, is from a little town tucked into the mountains near Frosinone. I've had many experiences there just like yours.

Kudos on making that lovely pasta. It truly is a thing of beauty!

[Laura Kelley]

Lovely post!

It took me back to the holiday preparations of my youth with the women making pasta and grinding meat etc.

Forgive me, but "Yow!" is no where near effusive enough for Allesandro.

Glad you got your groove back. Keep up the great work!

[Sara]

I LOVE homemade pasta. I have one of those Kitchenaid pasta rollers, but I don't use it nearly enough.

[Kim]

I am in LOVE with your blog. My husband is half Italian and spent 4 years living at the foot of the Alps. I have worked hard to learn a few traditional dishes to teach our five girls. I am in the process of learning about pasta making! I have contemplated purchasing a pasta machine ( I am torn because it feels like cheating) and you have offered me a bit of encouragement. Your pasta was beautiful as is your teacher.

[Adrienne]

Oh what a beautiful post! I spent an afternoon with the family of a friend outside Ferrara a few years ago making capellacci di zucca (pumkin ravioli) and it was one of the best food experiences I've ever had. I too particularly liked the 'underside of your arm' analogy - I found myself touching my arm as I read!

[Erinn]

Your posts from Italy are making me drool, and they are making me green with envy. What a treat to make pasta from scratch from a master.

[Juree]

Looks like you had a lovely trip. Though I am not lucky enough to have family there, I return to Italy as much as I possibly can. I went with my mom a few years ago to a wonderful Tuscan cooking school (Toscana Saporita) and spent many hours learning to make homemade pasta-- with squid ink no less! It was a messy, albeit delicious, affair!

[Sarah]

It's never feels as real until you're back in the place where that someone is supposed to be...& they're not there. I live away from where I grew up (albeit only about 5 states, not countries) & where my grandmother lived with us...the first time I went home after she died, it was so hard. But it needed to be hard, because it needed to feel real, because it's easier to pretend that it's not real when you're far from home.

Sorry, really a personal note, instead of a happy one about the pasta (which looks amazing), but this post felt very emotional to me! The pictures are beautiful, as always.

[Leah]

What a gorgeous homage to so many things. This gave my heart such a squeeze, Luisa. xo

[Lydia (The Perfect Pantry)]

This reminds me that it's been far too long since I made pasta from scratch, and that I've never made it in such a perfect kitchen, where the spirit of your family is so much in evidence.

[arundathi]

i made these at home a couple months ago - and loved it. its simple and delicious!

[Hillary]

Can you give us a recipe? Is it really just flour and eggs, and yes, what kind of flour?

[Sylvie]

ah!

I just scored (well... last week) an Italian non-electric pasta machine, in exchange for a few jars of home-made preserves and a basket of kitchen garden goodies. Have been going through my cookbooks for recipes on what to do.

Tagliatelles with venison & pork ragu is what I decided to make.

Thank you for the photos which will make it that much easier for me.

Enjoy the rest of your stay Luisa. and enjoy those truffles, too. What happened to them?

[Emily]

Beautiful prose, beautiful photos. You are one lucky lady, and we are as well, to share it with you.

[Sil BsAs]

How nice... Maria reminds me so much to my nonna Teresa, one of so many immigrants that came to South America escaping from the war...
Thanks for sharing such wonderful experience.

[Tea]

Oh, my dear, this one made me weep!

How beautiful, how poignant--and how lucky you are to have such people, such a place, such memories in your life.

[Alexa]

What a pleasure to read about your friend and your experience learning from her. When I was a child a lady from Milan came to our house equipped with a pasta machine. She and her husband were to stay with us for the week. She taught my mom how to makes all kinds of fresh pasta dishes. For years, my mom continued making them. I always think of this nice lady from Milan when I eat fresh pasta.

[Luisa]

Hillary - yes, it's really just flour and eggs. I would use all-purpose.

[Amalia]

I like your blog and your stories. This recipe is well know by me, my grandma make me a lot when I was a child.

[Leland]

Wonderful! You'll never go back to store-bought fresh pasta. I still rely on dried pasta for quick weeknight dinners and certain heavy sauces, but once you start making fresh pasta at home it's hard to eat the cheap stuff at all anymore. I recommend spending a cold day this winter making a full lasagna from scratch (and sharing it with me). Enjoy!

[maggie]

This entry is so inspiring. If I make homemade pasta, can I close my eyes and be transported to that kitchen?

Once you get the hang of this pasta on your own, perhaps you should hold a workshop in NY...

[Biz]

Who needs a pasta maker! I am definitely a cook who needs to "see" how its done, and then I can copy it.

I actually learned how to make gnocci by watching an Italian grandma make them on YouTube!

Thanks for a great idea!

[mark]

Amazing! Beautiful pictures. Have spent several months in an Italian home and never saw it done quite like that. Thank you! Just what I need for tonight's dinner.