Pastificio Carleschi make the best pasta we've eaten, using the stone-ground flour of carefully selected British-grown grains. The bronze die pasta is produced and dried at low temperatures to maintain the flavour and nutrition. |
We’ve sold a range of Pastificio Carleschi's superb pasta for almost a year now, but absolutely delighted to add our brand new Emmer & Fava Bean Sedani, the result of a collaborative project with Giovanni Carleschi.
From an idea hatched on a crop walk at Wakelyns Agroforestry late in the summer of 2020, to a dark, velvety pasta with the flavour of walnuts and spices the following spring.
Pasta made with fava beans and wheat is common across central and southern Italy, where beans grown well and, when blended with cereal flour, bring extra flavour and nutrition to pasta. Such blends were particularly important in years when the wheat harvest was poor.
In Tuscany and the Marche the preferred shape for fava and wheat flour pasta is tacconi, small squares with ruffled edges. With help from Giovanni of Pastificio Carleschi we've chosen sedani rigati, ridged tubes named for their likeness to celery stems. Without wanting to offend Tuscan traditionalists, we feel sedani hold a sauce better and are suited to a wider range of dishes than tacconi. Try them in dishes where you might otherwise use of macaroni or penne, or use in place of tacconi in recipes from the Marche or Tuscany.
Emmer (Triticum turgidum subsp. dicoccum) is an ancestor of durum wheat, and, with Einkorn and Spelt, was among the first cereals cultivated in the Fertile Crescent. It has a deliciously nutty flavour and can be eaten as a whole grain (farro) as well as ground into flour. It's ideal for cultivation in low-input farming systems and grows well in poor soils where other cereals struggle.
We harvested our first British-grown pasta on the 1st April 2021 - see the harvest in action.
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A few years ago we were looking for a sweetner for some granola recipes, something UK produced and minimally processed. When our apple syrup order from Liberty Fields arrived we knew we were onto something special - we quickly added them to our short list of brilliant Guest Producers
We've launched ten pulses and grains from British farms as part of Holland & Barrett's transformation of their food range, available in their stores across the UK. It's a fantastic opportunity to make British-grown fava beans, carlin peas and quinoa, along with other pulses and cereals, available more widely and to support more diverse farming.
Down a warren of country lanes, not far from the Tamar Valley in Cornwall, is Julie Bailey's orchard Lower Trelabe, where she grows historic local varieties of apple and makes her delicious Apple Natural apple shreds, traditional fruit leathers that contain only the natural plant sugars.
Nick Saltmarsh
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