
24 Meals, 24 Hours, 24 Posts. What better way to showcase our first year with Nella Pasta then through a culinary tour starting with hors d’oeuvres in Italy and ending with dessert in Jamaica Plain, MA? For our 24,24,24 post, we’ll show you the evolution of our artisanal pasta company from its inception to today through a 5-course meal shared with those who have supported us along the way.

Our menu follows our journey over the past year from attending culinary school in Florence to starting Nella, a specialty foods business based in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.
When we first met, we were fully immersed in Italian culture and cuisine after attending culinary school in Florence.






We chose the antipasti dishes based on our experiences in Italy: the arancini and fried melanzana as some of our favorite days in the classroom, the focaccia to bring back memories of our agreed on favorite city- Cinque Terre, and an assorted meat and cheese platter as an excuse to reminisce while perusing the historical North End in Boston to find authentic imported prosciutto, parmiggiano reggiano and other Italian staples.
Moving onto our primi course, we selected a fresh, hand-shaped pasta served with our own signature spiced brown butter thyme sauce to symbolize the founding of Nella Pasta.

After meeting at our previous job and bonding over our shared interest in food and history of culinary classes abroad, we decided to take the plunge and start our own specialty foods business focusing on artisanal handmade pasta. As part of our business model, we decided to sell our fresh pastas almost exclusively at local farmer’s markets. At these markets, we learned the importance of sustainability which lead to our passion and dedication to the local food movement.
Our secondi course illustrates this passion for local, sustainable food.

For the meat course, we looked to our grass fed beef vendor at our weekly farmer’s markets. We braised this aged local beef with homemade stock, wine and local winter vegetables to create a rich, winter dish celebrating the bounty of local meat and produce found close to home.
Our dolci course features a unique combination of a fresh, creamy lemon sabayon with a nutty, crunchy pine nut tart shell. We chose this dessert to represent our current departure from focusing solely on pasta to venturing into a full service catering company.


Working on our past handful of catered events, we are excited about our future culinary career once we expand our horizons to include pastry, different regional cuisines and techniques.
The Angle
If you’ve read the Nella Blog before, you know we like to focus on the source of our ingredients. To continue this trend, we wanted to share exactly where we sourced our ingredients to make this very special meal. It starts with City Feed and Supply, a neighborhood grocery, café and deli in Jamaica Plain featuring local and organic produce, meats and free range eggs, regional artisan cheeses, breads and pastries, fair trade organic coffee and many other local specialty foods.

We were first introduced to City Feed several months ago as a suggestion by a number of people as a place to sell our pasta wholesale. When we finally visited this bustling market earlier in the week, we were embarrassed it took us so long to get there! The market is filled with beautiful fruits, vegetables, cheeses, meats and more, all labeled with the name of the farm, grower or producer and their distance from Jamaica Plain. After feasting on a lunch of muffaletta sandwiches, soup and a delicious soy latte, we left the market with local New England organic sweet potatoes, russet potatoes, purple-topped turnips, celery root and broccoli for our meat and vegetable course.



Next up, the second best thing to hopping on an Alitalia flight to Florence… a trip to the Historic North End in Boston, also known as the Italian District. Unfortunately the spitting rain/snow mix made a long stroll around Salem and Hanover Streets seem far less fun than a walking through an outdoor Italian market in June, so instead I hopped out of the car at Salumeria Italiana right off of Hanover Street.


If the long crusty baguettes in the front window didn’t speak for themselves, the sign above the door let informed me I was entering the “Boston’s Best Italian Grocery” (phew!). After placing my order with the man behind the cheese counter (we chose a super-soft talleggio, semi-soft fontina, and a hard aged pecorino along with prosciutto and spicy soppresata), I was able to scope out the rest of the market and the multiple jars and bottles labeled in Italian featuring different tomatoes, anchovies, polenta grains, olives, pastas and more. While it may not quite measure up to the real thing, a quaint salumeria in the North End filled with cured meats, cheeses, pasta and fresh baked breads may fool you, even if just for a second, into thinking you’re back in Italy.

The next day, when we had scheduled to visit River Rock Farm in Brimfield, MA, the weather again failed us. Luckily, the oh-so-helpful farm manager, Seth, came to the rescue by adding a stop to his regular CSA deliveries (yes, you read that right- a grass fed beef CSA!). Without the hour and a half trip through the snow, we were still able to get our hands on local, grass-fed, aged beef for our braised short-rib dish, a 5-lb bag of bones to make our own homemade stock and a few extras for future local dinners!

(note: after I shot this photo I took Rachel’s suggestion to roast the beef bones before adding them to the pot of water and aromatics). River Rock Beef is available fresh and frozen, direct from the farm or at a number of near-by farmer’s markets and specialty stores (including City Feed and Supply, mentioned above). Check out their website here and start eating natural, humanely raised meat!
Lastly, the wine… Naturally, we turned to our friend Mike from Rooftop Gourmet for his expertise.

To start, we had some delicious prosecco thanks to Neha, Tony and Barbara. Next, per Mike’s suggestion, Patty picked up some delicious Tuscan Greco di Tufo for our first course. While we originally tried to obtain a homemade red from a local wine maker in Neeham, the wines were not quite ready for consumption, so we went with a Zinfandel from Turtle Creek Winery in Lincoln, MA. Finally, for dessert Anthony brought us Castello di Poppiano, a tuscan dessert wine “not overly syrupy but with tons of rich flavors that are nutty, raisiny and sweet.” I have to say, I’m not usually one for dessert wines, but this was delicious! It certainly pays to have a friend who expertly pairs food and wine!


Prepwork
Bright and early Saturday morning, I arrived at Rachel’s house with ingredients in hand. Thanks to some prep work the day before, Rachel had already made a pot of risotto and shaped it into golf-ball sized rounds stuffed with buffalo mozzarella for our arancini. With a quick dip in an egg batter and roll in homemade seasoned bread crumbs, the arancini were prepped and ready to be fried right before our guests arrived. I had the spent the day before slow cooking our beef stock (shown above) and hand-shaping our farfalle.



Throughout the morning and afternoon…. the polenta was prepared, spread out in a jelly roll pan and cut into rounds to later bake. We marinated our short ribs in red wine and aromatics, seared them in a screaming hot pan, reduced our braising liquid, put the meat back in the stock pot with the liquid and slow cooked them for about 2 hours.

We prepared our dessert by making the pine nut crust, filling a tart pan and blind baking the dough, filling the tart shell with the sabayon cream, putting it under the broiler to caramelize and garnished it with piped honeyed mascarpone, powdered sugar and a lemon wedge.

Other than that, we sliced, diced, boiled, baked, heated, stirred, plated and cleaned until we were ready to go! Our photos will tell you the rest of the story….
Antipasti:





Primi:

Secondi:



Contorni:

Dolci:


Friends, Family, Fun
It only seems fitting that we celebrate our first year with the people who helped make it possible. For this meal,we extended invitations to the friends and family members who helped us conceptualize the business, spent hours rolling out pasta dough in the kitchen with us, and showed up the farmer’s markets, rain or shine, to keep us company. Our business would not be possible without this network of support.




And there it is… Nella over the past year! What a fun evening to celebrate a year of hard-work payed off. It shows how we have evolved and let us celebrate with those who helped us along the way. Finally, it launches our business in a new direction that could only happen with a full year of experience under our belt. Thanks so much to all our friends and family for coming to the dinner and to Foodbuzz for making it possible!