Romagna, where Artusi began: passatelli and Sunday cappelletti Episode 1. Bella opens Pellegrino Artusi's 1891 classic in his home town of Forlimpopoli: a book nobody wanted, a capon that sacrifices itself, and a hundred cappelletti too many.
There is a book on my kitchen shelf with flour in its spine, a broth stain on the cappelletti page and a pressed vine leaf somewhere in the desserts. Pellegrino Artusi's Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well. My nonna cooked from it in Milan, and I have wanted to cook my way through it for as long as I can remember. So here we go: two of Artusi's recipes every weekend, the place they come from, and the man himself, who was funnier than any cookbook writer has a right to be.
Where else to start than where he started. Artusi was born on 4 August 1820 in Forlimpopoli, a small town on the old Via Emilia between Forlì and Cesena, in Romagna. His father was a prosperous merchant. Pellegrino studied, travelled, and would probably have stayed home for good if it had not been for one terrible night in January 1851, when the bandit known as il Passatore and his gang took the town's theatre hostage during a performance and robbed the leading families. The Artusis were among them. His sister Gertrude never recovered. The next year the family left for Florence.
In Florence he did well in trade and finance, never married, and lived on Piazza d'Azeglio with a manservant from his home town, his cook Marietta and a pair of cats. One of them, Sibillone, gets a mention in the book's advice on digestion: when he ate too much, he simply fasted for a day or two and walked it off on the rooftops. Artusi approved. So do I, in theory.
A book nobody wanted He spent years testing recipes at home with Marietta, then went looking for a publisher. A Florentine firm he knew well came to dinner, ate happily and said no. One of them told him the book might be taken seriously if Doney, the most fashionable name in Florentine catering at the time, had written it. A Milan publisher wrote back that they did not do cookbooks. So in 1891 Artusi paid to print 1,000 copies himself, fully expecting a flop.
It gets better. Forlimpopoli held a charity fair, and he sent two copies as prizes. The people who won them laughed at the book and sold it to the tobacconist. Once the book began to sell, he wrote to his friend back home that it might one day bring honour to their town.
Their town, I wrote: pique stopped me from saying mine.la stizza non mi fece dir mio. By the time he died in Florence in 1911, at 90, his little home manual had sold more than 200,000 copies and grown to 790 recipes from all over a country that had only just become one. Italy was unified on paper in 1861. In its kitchens, this book did much of the work: Bolognese ragù next to Florentine beans next to Neapolitan macaroni, written for families, in plain Italian, with jokes.
I love the beautiful and the good wherever they are found, and I cannot bear to see God's good gifts mangled.Amo il bello ed il buono ovunque si trovino e mi ripugna di vedere straziata, come suol dirsi, la grazia di Dio. Romagna: eggs, broth and a big appetite Romagna is the eastern half of Emilia-Romagna, the part that runs from the Apennines down to the Adriatic beaches. People here are loud, generous and proud of it. They eat piadina at the roadside, drink Sangiovese, and dance the liscio to Romagna mia, the 1954 song by Secondo Casadei that every Romagnolo can sing drunk or sober. Federico Fellini grew up in Rimini and filled his films with it. Forlimpopoli itself, under its fourteenth-century fortress, is a quiet place that has produced the father of Italian home cooking and, in 1986, Andrea Dovizioso, the 2004 125cc motorcycle world champion. Slow broth and fast bikes. Very Romagna.
The town has forgiven him for the tobacconist. Casa Artusi, in the old Chiesa dei Servi on the main square, is a museum, library and cookery school devoted to Italian home cooking, and every year at the end of June the Festa Artusiana fills the streets with food for a week.
Saturday: passatelli I began with recipe no. 20, because it is Romagna in a bowl and takes no time at all if your broth is ready. Breadcrumbs, Parmigiano, egg, a little nutmeg and lemon zest, kneaded into a firm dough and pushed through a special iron straight into simmering broth. Artusi adds a little beef marrow to keep them tender. I used soft butter and nobody complained.
There are few families in Romagna without the iron to make them, because this soup is held in high regard there, as are all soups bound with eggs, which on account of the climate are eaten almost every day.poche essendo le famiglie in Romagna che non l'abbiano, per la ragione che questa minestra vi è tenuta in buon conto So what is this iron? The ferro per passatelli is a round steel disc about the size of a saucer, slightly domed and pierced all over with holes about 5 mm wide, with a wooden handle sticking out on each side. You set a ball of dough on the board, put the disc on top and press down hard with both hands. The dough has nowhere to go but up through the holes, and it comes out as short, fat, rough little cylinders, thicker than spaghetti and craggy on the outside, which is exactly what you want: the rough surface holds the broth. Cut them off at about 4 cm and drop them straight into the pot.
The Romagna way: press the iron straight down on the dough and the passatelli come up through the holes. Outside Romagna almost nobody owns one, and you do not need to. A potato ricer does the same job. Use the disc with the largest holes (around 5 mm; the fine mash disc makes them too thin and they fall apart). Fill the ricer two-thirds full, hold it right over the simmering broth and squeeze slowly and steadily, then run a knife across the bottom every 4 cm so the strands drop into the pot. The dough should feel firm, like modelling clay: if it oozes out smooth and shiny it is too soft, so knead in a spoonful of the breadcrumbs you kept back. Artusi himself says a piping syringe will do at a pinch, which tells you he cared about the dish more than the gadget.
No iron? A potato ricer with large holes, held right over the broth. Cut the strands every 4 cm with a knife. Either way the little rough worms sink, then rise to the surface in a minute or two, smelling of cheese and lemon. On account of the climate, Artusi says, and I love that: damp Romagna winters demand eggs, and this is the quickest way to eat them. Serve them as soon as they float.
Recipe: passatelli in broth artusi
Sunday: cappelletti, and poor Carlino Recipe no. 7 is the great one: cappelletti, the little hats, filled with ricotta, capon breast cooked in butter and Parmigiano, folded around your fingertip and cooked in capon broth. In Romagna they are the dish of Christmas Day and of every Sunday that deserves it. Artusi's description of the capon still makes me laugh out loud.
If you have never made them, the shape is easier than it sounds and quicker once your hands learn it. Artusi printed a circle on the page, 64 mm across, as the template for the cutter; a 6.5 cm pastry cutter or a small glass does the job. Here is how it goes, one hat at a time.
How to shape cappelletti This soup wants capon broth, from that dim-witted creature which, out of the goodness of its heart, offers itself up for mankind at Christmas.di quel rimminchionito animale che per sua bontà si offre nella solennità di Natale in olocausto agli uomini Then the warning. On Christmas Day in Romagna, he says, you will meet heroes who boast of eating a hundred cappelletti, and one man he knew burst trying. Two dozen are enough for a moderate eater. I made about 150 for six and we stopped, mostly, at two dozen.
And then, because this is Artusi, a story. A well-off couple in the flat lands of Romagna send their son Carlino off to study in Ferrara so he can become a lawyer, maybe even a member of parliament. Within the week his mother sighs over a Sunday bowl of cappelletti, if only Carlino were here, and there is a knock at the door. Carlino is home, and he would rather be chopped to pieces than go back to his books. His mother has the last word.
Better a live donkey than a dead scholar.meglio un asino vivo che un dottore morto. Artusi tells it with a raised eyebrow, and Carlino spends the rest of his life on a gun, a dog and a fast horse. I think of him every time I sit down to these. Some Sundays, cappelletti are more important than ambition.
Recipe: cappelletti romagna artusi
Bella's tip: Make one big pot of broth on Saturday morning with a capon or a good free-range hen, and it carries you through the whole weekend: passatelli on Saturday night, cappelletti on Sunday. Shape the cappelletti in the morning, keep them on a floured tray and they will wait happily until lunch. Extras freeze beautifully.
What to pour Sangiovese di Romagna : Romagna's own red: cherry, a little earth, soft tannins. Lovely with the cappelletti and the capon.Albana di Romagna secco : The region's white, golden and quietly firm. Good with passatelli and their lemony Parmigiano.A young Barbera : From my cellar, because I am from Piedmont now. Bright acidity cuts through a rich broth.Next weekend Artusi left Romagna and so will I. Next Saturday I open the book somewhere new, cook two more recipes, and on Sunday morning I will tell you where they come from. Get the book if you can, and cook along. Just stop at two dozen.
Recipes adapted from Pellegrino Artusi, Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well (La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene, 1891). Quotes translated from the Italian by Bella. Buy the book on Amazon .
