Pasta & Lemonade

You’ve all heard it before, “when life hands you lemons…make pasta!” (ok, we changed it). After seeing the film crews and hearing Bob talk about the short independent film, Lemonade, its about time I watched it. The documentary follows a number of laid off ad executives from large agencies and what they did to carry on (are you getting the ‘lemonade’ theme yet?). Rachel and I always tell people how lucky we were to have the opportunity to start a new life doing what we really care about and this film follows a number of other people that luckily feel the same way. It’s amazing to see how getting laid off actually makes you take a step back to re-evaluate whats most important to you. For Rachel and I, not only did we get to enter the culinary world and start working hands-on in the kitchen, but we have learned so much about the food industry in general and the importance of the local food movement. It’s been a pleasure getting to know so many local farmers, specialty food producers and chefs who help us answer the oh-so-important question “where does my food come from?” (if you’ve never thought to ask or even think about it, it’s time). Who would have thought that starting a pasta company could have a drastic, positive change on your diet? (ok now you’re definitely getting the lemonade theme). Also completely selfishly, what we do without Bob’s RedEye Roasters coffee?? If you haven’t tried it yet, you’re missing out. As some of the laid of ad-execs suggest, it doesn’t necessarily have to take something as drastic as losing your job to change your life, just remember to incorporate those things, be it cooking, yoga, biking, etc., that make you happy in your free time.

Enough sentiment for the day… check out this article, “Chefs Embrace Pasta as a Blank Canvas” from the Restaurant News to read up on one of America’s favorite foods… you guessed it, pasta. Now if they only they had a section on a local variety that’s made with whole grains, flax and local seasonal produce. Well, maybe next time…

Introducing….Bentley!

You may remember seeing a third member of the Nella team at last year’s farmer’s markets– ok not quite full member, but a very entertaining pug named Finn. This year, we’re adding one more! Introducing, Bentley– Rachel and Jordan’s brand new pup! Rachel and I certainly prefer to have each other’s company at the markets, and now Finny has met his match. We can’t wait for the season to start so we can get these two back to the market! (Not yet for Hingham….. but we’re working on it).

On the business front, exciting news is coming soon that will make buying Nella Pasta in the off season much easier! We’ll be sure to update the blog with more details later in the week.

Foodbuzz 24,24,24: From Florence to Culinary Entrepreneurship, with a Dedication to All Things Local

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!

Blast from the Past

Trying desperately to organize the thousands of files on my computer, I came across a folder from my previous job in Saratoga Springs. In it were half dozen or so blog posts I wrote for local city guide websites. My first blog post ever? “Slow Food- Eat Local.” While the post has long since expired on its original website, I happened to find the screen shot from our  fan page on facebook and thought it was rather relevant to share on Nella.

If I were to edit the same post today, there’s not too many things I would change, but to add Gracie’s Restaurant in Providence to the list. In fact, there are dozens more specialty stores, farmer’s markets and restaurants dedicated to using local foods that have sprung up over the last couple years. If you’re still not convinced of the benefits of local food, watch Food, Inc now available in the “watch instantly” section on Netflix.

We have a VERY exciting week ahead and will report back on Sunday with a full write-up of our special event on Saturday and the week’s worth of prep-work leading up to the event.

Buy Fresh, Buy Local

Yesterday, Rachel and I hoped in the car and drove past acres and acres of cranberry bogs to Wareham, MA to attend the 6th Annual SEMAP Business to Business Networking Meeting. SEMAP (The Southern Massachusetts Agricultural Partnership) is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to help agricultural enterprises in southeastern Massachusetts achieve economic success by creating demand for locally-produced agricultural products and providing business/ technical assistance to growers. Remember spark notes in high school? Now imagine you could use them to do your job. We can.

From the moment we walked in the (very swanky) barn door, saw tables of local wines, dried cranberries, coffee and cider, we knew the drive was worth it. We spent the next 20 minutes or so mingling with buyers and market managers, bakers and value added producers, vegetable growers and meat producers and our host, Sarah Cogswell. After everyone was seated, we learned a bit more about SEMAP and the “Buy Fresh, Buy Local” campaign. Turns out, we were seated in a room filled with people not only just like us, but people who wanted to help us.

We learned about ‘The Chef’s Collaborative’ which links farmers and local food producers with chefs to “renew America’s food traditions.” Specifically, ‘the RAFT Grow-Out Project’ initiative which selects approximately 20-25 heirloom varieties of fruits and vegetables native to Massachusetts, urges farmers to grow these varieties, provides the seeds to farmers and finally connects the farmers with chefs who will then highlight these heirloom varieties on their menus. Even beyond the symbiotic relationship between chef and farmer, the RAFT Project raises awareness for bioagricultural biodiversity and strengthens the local economy. Speaking of the local economy, check out these facts (proves that you really do vote with your fork!):

Next, we met Joseph Hefner, executive chef of Gracie’s Restaurant in Providence. After hearing about his dedication to using local meats, cheeses and seasonal produce, going as far as growing his own flower and herb garden on the roof, you can bet where I’ll make my first reservation come baseball season this year.

Over the course of the afternoon we learned how many valuable resources are available to us from local ingredients to indoor winter farmer’s markets, heirloom vegetables native to MA to the ‘market mobile’ which delivers local food to nearby restaurants, hotels and homes. What a great day! How often can you attend a meeting and walk out fed, slightly buzzed on local wines and anxious to get home to start planning for the future. Previously, we worried about the winter months and the various dilemmas that arise from going wholesale. Now, we know that this winter will serve as valuable planning time to carefully select farmer’s markets for the season, prepare recipes based on the calendar and find vendors for our ingredients. One big change in particular– this year we’re planning on making our own ricotta. All in all, we had an amazing time meeting new people, learning about new programs, and most importantly, getting excited about what’s to come! If you have a minute, click on the links highlighted above for SEMAP and Chef’s Collaborative to learn more about their programs or write your questions/ comments here.

New Year for Nella

While the winter months have been slow for the most part, we’re still doing our fair share of cooking, business planning, and of course, eating. It only seems fitting that Rachel and I rang in the New Year with a plate full of roasted garlic ravioli. Here’s a peek at our New Year’s Eve celebration… a huge thank you to Rachel & Jordan for a great party!

Moving forward, we have an interesting week ahead. First off, as our last step to going wholesale, we’ll be dropping off our fresh linguine and ravioli samples to the lab tomorrow to be tested for shelf life. We probably won’t be needing a whole batch of either variety to deliver to the lab, so we may just get lucky and bring some home!

On Monday, we’ll be attending the 6th Annual Business-to-Business Winter Networking Meeting hosted by SEMAP, “a regional nonprofit organization whose mission is to help agricultural enterprises in Southeastern MA achieve economic success.”  It should be a great networking opportunity for us to meet local restaurant owners, caterers, food processors and farmer’s market managers. We’ll follow up next week on the event!

In the meantime, Rachel and I will be brainstorming ideas for this month’s 24,24,24 on Foodbuzz, a summary of 24 unique dinner parties hosted by Foodbuzz Featured Publishers. Hopefully we’ll get picked!