PASTA STRUNCATURA (CALABRIA)

A great friend and importer of Italian foods named Gennaro D’Alessio first introduced me to pasta struncatura. He told me of a traditional preparation of a pasta dough from Calabria that is rarely made today but is one of the most interesting pastas he has ever encountered. After doing some research I found that in Oretta Zanini de Vita's book Encyclopedia of Pasta, she also speaks of the story and history of the Calabrian pasta dough.

Here is a link to the great book:

https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520255227/encyclopedia-of-pasta

A story behind the creation of the dish is that at the end of every evening workers in the flour mills would sweep the floors of all of the remaining flours and bring it home to make pasta for their families. Seeing that Calabria was and continues to be one of the poorer region in all of Italy, wasting anything would never make sense.

Over the years we have made many versions of pasta struncatura and it has always been served with very few and simple ingredients.

The flour combinations that I use now are farro, semola, buckwheat, rye and 00 with water. We typically serve the dish with garlic, neonata anchovies, parsley, lemon and breadcrumbs. Simple, delicious and "molto Italiano".