Pastificio Fabbri: Senatore Cappelli Pasta

IMG_0704 (1)By Brenna Boone

Pastificio Fabbri, an artisanal Tuscan pasta producer, creates the Senatore Cappelli pasta we used for our JBF dinner in the Chianti area. The pasta is made with a special grain hybrid because the main grain that is used is particularly difficult to grown on its own.

This grain comes from a particularly tall plant, which is easily knocked over by heavy winds or rainfall, and the fallen plant needs too much energy to prop itself back up. However, the quality of grain that the plant produces is superb, and has been around for a very long time. This grain used to be particularly popular because of its rich flavor and healthier qualities but gradually fell out of cultivation with the producers because it was difficult to grow. This is why a hybrid grain was developed by genetist Nazareno Strampelli at the beginning of the 20th century to make the plant more stable; Strampelli dedicated the hybrid’s name to the Marquis Raffaele Cappelli from Abbruzzo, who was the senator of the Italian Kingdom in the late 1800s and a sustainer of both agrarian reform and Strampelli’s specific efforts.

If you looked at the grains throughout the world used in pastas, you would notice there may be little bits of the Senatore Cappelli grain mixed with different producers’ plants, but none have as dominant of a Senatore Cappelli gene as the Fabbri producers. This is what makes Fabbri pastas so special. The Fabbri producers dedicate their production to quality, not quantity. They produce pasta that is very nutritious and is closer to whole-wheat pasta rather than typical refined pasta. Because we chose to serve a traditional Tuscan pasta at the James Beard dinner, we chose to pair Fabbri pasta with a very classic sauce – ragu. A ragu is a rustic and simple sauce that consists of stew with broken up meat. The Fabbri Senatore Cappelli pasta and the ragu made for an iconic, delicious, and memorable dish.

Discover the world of Fabbri at the company site.

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