The pasta masters
Libby Purves learns to chop, batter and drink like an Italian as she discovers the secrets of...
NORTH of Venice, beyond ochre villas.a great flat plain, the foothills swell gently towards the distant Dolomites. Even in the summer heat, it is a green place, dotted with This tapestry of rolling woodlands, vines, fat cattle, dairy buffalo, orchards and market gardens is the landscape that first built and fed La Serenissima.
If Venice is a surreal, watery, ornate, cruel romantic jewel of history, its Veneto hinterland is a place bounty, good food and wine. For a week my husband Paul and I joined a small group at this industrious, delicious Eden for a house-party-style holiday to learn about the local cooking. We were whisked from the airport to Casa Lentiner, on the Borgoluce agriturismo estate. And we cooked. Oh, how we cooked.
On the first day, Livia, our cheerful and expert hostess, told us to be less British because this is ‘not a training course but is about the flavours of Italy’. Livia is a restaurant cook and was our guide on excursions, but our guru was her friend Gabriela – an indomitable mama of five children, poultry, cows and everything that grows.
She roared up the stony track to Casa Lentiner in her car every day with ingredients, many from her own garden – a glorious long-legged and proudly free-range chicken, brontosaurus-sized turkey breasts, and fresh eggs with bright yokes which made our pasta sheets a rich pale gold.
She led us through the various cooking processes, speaking Italian – which some of the group understood and the rest of us had translated by Livia. But, frankly, since most of the processes involved a great deal of chopping to blend flavours, it was not long before even I knew what Gabriela meant when she cried ‘Piccolo! Piccolo!’ as my too-large bits of onion skittered around the board, a sharp ‘Troppo!’ when my shaking hand overdid the flour, and the longed-for ‘Basta!’ when at last the hand-whipped egg whites solidified for the tiramisu.
Our seven-strong group became a cheerful family, lavishly fuelled by prosecco (this is the heart of the prosecco vine region). The villa was cool and reassuring, and from the very first lunch there were foody revelations. Who knew that chestnuthoney went well with young buffalo cheese, or that beef salami could be so delicate, almost thoughtful, an experience?
On our first day we also discovered a piscina naturale – a swimming pond, purified by natural reedbeds.
Some of the others were a bit wary owing to the boast that the pond was a good habitat for amphibians, but as an amphibian myself, I swam with them among the waterlilies. It was like being in Narnia.
I had vaguely thought that I might leave Paul a-chopping and a-blending, and might duck out of half the sessions (there are four or five through the week, in between aperitif-studded visits to Venice, Treviso, Conegliano and a winery). But I got into the swing of it. A certain rivalry even developed: sometimes a group of us was preoccupied with the first courses (primi e secondi) and the others down the table created the desserts – i dolci. So I have rarely been more outraged when, tasting my mandorlata cake at dinner, Paul mused: ‘Mmm, it tastes almost almondy…’
‘I spent half an hour pulverising those almonds!’ I cried, offended.
THAT day Paul had been deep in stove-work and mesmerised by the week’s least popular foodstuff – a huge, evil, reconstituted salt cod whose aroma drove most of us across to the far side of the room, whimpering. Competition sharpened even further on the unforgettable tagliatelle session, when we made our own dough, battered it violently for about half an hour to get the
elasticity out of it, tried to roll it thin enough ‘to see San Luca’s church through it’, and then made tapes of pasta without it all sticking together. I had to unroll every strand of mine by hand. Even Paul concluded: ‘I now know everything about making pasta from scratch – which is, don’t!’ The San Luca rule, by the way, is from Livia’s home town, Bologna, and a great deal of discussion went on with Gabriela, from the Veneto, about the rules on everything from flourbalance to almond-bashing. One is amazed that the unification of Italy ever happened, given the rows they had over borlotti beans to the correct shape of gnocchi. We grew fond of this rolling, gentle green hinterland, especially as Venice in the heat was still too crowded for pleasure. But even there Livia gave us fascinating insights about food at the Rialto market and she took us to a cafe for reviving cicchetti – traditional small bar snacks. It was first time I’ve ever agreed to eat anything octopus-related.
Another day, we headed to the family winery of Malibran to discover how prosecco is made. Over a salami and cheese lunch, we were led through a tasting of five styles of the fizzy stuff, from a dour yeasty col fondo to the sweetest extra Brut.
The oddest one was a rosé which smelt divinely fruity but delivered a weird acid kick. Our hostess Silvia was delighted: ‘Yes! You see? Your taste is disobeying your nose.’ This apparently is a very good thing in the wine world.
There was a trip to a vast supermarket for cheap hunks of Parmesan, and an abortive raid on the estate’s blackberries to make a bavarois. We made a triumphant semifreddo dessert, which we fell on like vultures; an unforgettable pork dinner, and a terrifying confrontation with a creamy baccala made of that salt cod.
Some things I will never see the point of, such as polenta. But the sarde in saor – sweet and sour sardines – was a revelation. It involved cleaning innumerable sardines and getting the spines out, frying the fish, and then laboriously layering them with red onions, vinegar, pine nuts and raisins and then storing in the fridge for a day. But it was worth it: this dish was the most delicious thing I have eaten for years.
Despite the glorious views, Casa Lentiner is a fair (hot, dusty) walk from anywhere, so it’s not a holiday for restless teenagers. But it’s different, intimate and cheerful.
There was time to read, walk or to wallow amid the newts and waterlilies in the piscina naturale.
The trip is a warm and tasty memory of laughs and suppers – the aroma of the next meal is always comfortingly close.
And I shall cherish the moment when Pavarotti – Nessun Dorma-ing away on the kitchen CD player – hit the high notes on ‘Vincero!’ at the precise moment I finished rolling the last of my gnocchi on the tines of a fork. Vincero! I will triumph!