Paglia e Fieno

Paglia e fieno translates literally to straw and hay, and refers to the combination of yellow and green pasta served together. It's probably most commonly seen as tagliolini or a similar long-cut shape, but I've seen bags of many types of pasta 'paglia e fieno' around Emilia-Romagna.

Thats why I wanted to try out this color comination in two ways - first, as tagliatelle, and then in garganelli.

According to the Encyclopedia of Pasta, paglia e fieno, when found as taglionini or similar shapes, should be made with durum wheat semola flour and eggs (and of course spinach for the green dough).

I decided to go with a more tender soft-wheat dough, using 00 flour in both my plain and spinach pasta.

For the egg dough: the standard ratio of 1 egg per 100g of flour applies.

For the spinach dough: use 2 eggs and around 70g of cooked spinach for every 300g of flour. For this dough, you really need to rely on touch as you knead it. Depending on how much moisture remains in your spinach, you may need another handful of flour. Once your spinach has been cooked down (you can do this in a pan without any water or oil), blend it and measure out 70g. Whisk this into your eggs, and then make your dough using the usual well method.

Once you have made both doughs and they both have rested, roll them out. You can either do this by hand, or in sections using a pasta machine. I used my Marcato hand-crank machine, and rolled my sections out to level 6.

Dust both pieces well with extra flour, and then stack one on top of the other. Fold the dough onto itself and cut into strips that are roughly 7-8mm wide. Shake to separate, dust with additional flour if needed, and curl into nests until you are ready to cook.

Now, on to garganelli.

I’ve written about these already, but before I got this pettine. Back then I was using my rigagnocchi, but the pettine allows you to make more ridges much closer together.

Plus, it’s nice to have a handcrafted tool that maintains a centuries-old technique in pasta making.

I got mine from Marco Galavotti, aka Al Marangoun on Instagram. I went to one of the open-air marekts in Emilia-Romagna where Marco sells his wares, but you can also message or email him to place an order!

The process remains the same, regardless of if you are using a rigagnocchi or a pettine.

All you need to do is roll out your rested dough until quite thin.

I used setting 6 on my Marcato Atlas 150, for a thickness of 1.5mm. You could also make them slightly thicker, at around 2mm.

Cut 4cm squares, and roll diagonally on the pettine using the accompanying wooden dowel, also known as a bastoncino.

Gently slide each of the finished garganelli of the bastoncino and let rest while you finish both the egg and spinach variations.

Both the tagliatelle and the garganelli would go well with a ragù. Another common preparation, especially for the garganelli, would be in a cream sauce with peas (and also traditionally pancetta or another similar product).