Whether bathed in fragrant sauce and freshly grated cheeses, layered in hearty lasagna or cooked in perfect-for-winter soups, who doesn’t love pasta? But don’t limit yourself to buying mass-produced varieties at the supermarket, because St. Louis is home to two pasta makers, both in south St. Louis, who turn out pastas so fresh and flavorful they nearly bite back.
At the Mangia Italiano plant on Cherokee Street, Joe Stein and a crew of five churn out cut, extruded and filled pastas each week, made from local ingredients. Its slick tile walls, walk-in coolers and cement floors function very well for making extraordinary fresh pastas.
The air fairly zinged with Stein’s quiet enthusiasm for process and product as we toured the small plant. Machines for mixing, cutting and extruding pastas fill one room. Rods for drying long strings of pastas stood at the ready for the next batch. It’s quiet on Fridays, when the plant gets cleaned and readied for the following week’s production, so Stein had time to talk.
“Two years ago, we would get excited when the Bottleworks ordered 20 pounds. Today, our restaurant orders top 100 to 200 pounds,” he said. As we talk, another worker comes in to make a restaurant’s special order for filled spinach raviolis. “Sometimes, we need to make pasta on Fridays, too.
“Once you try our pasta, you’ll get the richness and the texture. The pop, and the chew in your mouth. It’s wonderful. I hate to be a snob, but boxed, dried pasta doesn’t taste that good,” Stein declared.
Check out the flavors and shapes on Mangia’s Web site – there’s too many to list, but I’ll toss out beet, lemon pepper, chipotle and saffron as a teaser. Don’t expect to shop at the plant on Cherokee, however. Mangia sells at farmers’ markets and local groceries and offers order pickups at its namesake restaurant on South Grand Boulevard as well.
Chef and owner Jamey Tochtrop of Stellina Pasta offers his organic semolina and whole wheat-walnut pastas by special order from his restaurant on Watson Road. When the restaurant opened in 2007, nests of fresh pastas and stuffed angolotti waited in display cases to entice diners to try great pasta at home. Today, the cases are gone, but Tochtrop still sells to home cooks. You can walk out with the varieties the restaurant is serving that day; he’ll need a few days’ notice for specialized items, like whole sheets and hand-cut pappardelle. “What sets us apart is organic ingredients,” he said. “The semonlina, the whole wheat, the eggs and herbs are highest quality. Our agnolotti uses goat cheese from Goatsbeard Farm, one of our local vendors.”
Stellina only does laminated, or rolled, pasta – no extruded shapes. The “factory” at Stellina is the café’s kitchen, but the staff has doubled since opening. “We always have semolina and whole wheat-walnut pasta, but we’ll add flavor like basil, lemon, sunflower seeds, herbed.” When you pick up at the café, be warned: The great smells alone intoxicate.
Tasting these pastas was such fun – Stein was right, fresh is better than dried, the taste is bigger and richer, the texture smooth and the mouth feel superior. They cook up in a fraction of the time, too – about 90 seconds for the thin noodles and four to five minutes for thicker types. And don’t expect to store fresh pasta very long; it should be used right away.
That won’t be a problem, since these pastas make for great eating. On a tip from Stein, Mangia’s chipotle linguini went in a chili mac appetizer topped with Wolf Brand Texas chili, sour cream and grated Cheddar. The taste of chipotle, smoky and hot, made a good mac even better.
Stellina’s tagliatelle with a lemon-cream sauce pretty much stole the show at a recent dinner. The pasta was satiny and lush, the sauce silky, the lemon zest bright; it wowed all six guests. A butternut squash lasagna using Stellina’s whole wheat-walnut sheets, mozzarella and a creamy white sauce was another scene-stealer.
Mangia’s semolina angel hair pasta sopped up the oil, garlic and butter sauce; increasing the sauce recipe by half worked well the second time. The flavorful mushroom ravioli made by Stein and his crew were lovely dressed with a simple buerre blanc.
The main difference guests cited between the two makers was texture. Stellina felt soft but succulent, the Mangia pasta a bit feisty, almost beefy. Both pastas taste so fine, plan to treat yourself. Buy some soon.
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This article appears in Dec 1-31, 2010.