You haven’t eaten pasta until you’ve had it fresh and hand made.
“The taste is totally different,” says Giorgia Zanzani, who was born and bred in Bologna, Italy, the birthplace of tagliatelle and Bolognese.
As a child, Giorgia spent many a Sunday watching her grandma make pasta from scratch, and learning the traditional recipes and techniques that she now uses in her own business I’mpasta.
I’mpasta, which means ‘knead’ in Italian, encapsulates the authentic, hand-made, and entirely-from-scratch technique that Giorgia uses for her pasta.
Her tagliatelle is based on organic flour and free-range Possum Creek eggs. It’s kneaded, rolled out with a custom-made 1.2 metre rolling pin, and then cut by hand into ribbon-like strips.
She says using a machine would speed things up, but it just wouldn’t be the same.
“The texture is totally different. A machine makes flat tagliatelle, and the sauce doesn’t attach,” Giorgia said.
”When you make it with a rolling pin it has a rough surface which makes the sauce stick to the pasta.”
Giorgia also makes fresh gnocchi, including a non-traditional sweet potato gnocchi, ravioli, and a selection of pasta sauces including fresh tomato and organic mincemeat Bolognese. All of the vegetables she uses are sourced from local farm, Jumping Red Ant.
Giorgia says it has always been her dream to make and share pasta with the community.
“Every time I cook pasta it makes me relaxed and makes me feel at home. It reminds me of my Grandma.”
• Story by Kate O’Neill. Pics by Daniel Carnevale.