The pasta grannies of Sardinia

The beginning of the year is a dreary time – the glitz and glamour of Advent and Christmas are over, the trees are bare, everything is grey-brown, it still gets dark far too early and the sun only makes an appearance on rare occasions. But luckily there is a proven remedy for the dreariness: pasta! For me, it is real ‘comfort food’, a meal that provides comfort and cosiness and, incidentally, brings back holiday memories of my favourite island.

If you want to save calories or just get in the mood for a big pasta feast in the evening, I recommend my latest discovery: the Pasta Grannies, Italian grandmothers who make pasta by hand. You can admire them on YouTube, and watching these ladies, some of whom are over ninety years old, conjure up sometimes incredibly elaborate pasta dishes in their kitchens at home is guaranteed to banish any winter blues!

Of course, we are primarily interested in Sardinian pasta here, and no fewer than 11 pasta grannies from Sardinia showcase their culinary skills on YouTube. I would like to introduce five of my favourites to you here. I'll start with a pasta speciality that anyone who has ever been to Sardinia will probably be familiar with: malloreddus (literally: male calves). At first glance, you might mistake them for gnocchi, but the similarity ends with their external shape. The way malloreddus are made is astonishing. Anna Manai shows us how it's done:

I could watch Singnora Manai rolling out malloreddus for hours, and with a little practice, I'm sure I could make them myself. The situation is different with lorighittas (Sardinian for ‘earrings’). This pasta, which is threatened with extinction, has been made exclusively in the mountain village of Morgongiori in the province of Oristano for hundreds of years and is traditionally eaten on All Saints' Day. However, the young women of the village now find the production process too laborious, and so 93-year-old Cesaria is perhaps one of the last people who still master this technique:

Less cause for cultural pessimism is provided by Sos Cannisones, a special type of macaroni from central Sardinia. It is heart-warming to watch three generations of a large Sardinian family working together harmoniously to make the pasta, kneading the dough, putting it through the mincer and laying out and cooking the resulting pasta (the women) or providing musical accompaniment and quality control (the men), and then at the end, everyone tucking into the delicious Cannisones together:

Another rare type of pasta that may not be around for much longer is the incredibly delicate filindeu (‘God's wool’). Only three elderly ladies in Nuoro still know how to make it. You can admire one of these virtuosos here:

Giuseppa Porcu from Ozieri is 95 years old and probably one of the oldest pasta makers in the world. She makes a local pasta variety called Maccarones de Ungia (fingernails) and the very similar Malloreddus, which brings us full circle:

Zu beobachten, mit welcher Verve die rüstige Seniorin den Teig bearbeitet, lässt nur einen Schluss zu: Pasta ist ein wahres Lebenselixier! In jedem Falle habe ich jetzt Lust bekommen, meine eigene frische Pasta herzustellen, und verabschiede mich mit einem sardischen „Adiosu“ in meine Küche.

Herzlich

Ihr Joachim Waßmann

Beitragsbild: Malloreddus. Anna Guerrero, Pexels