It’s hard to believe that Bologna, one of Europe’s great food capitals, gets the cold shoulder from most visitors to northern Italy, yet its handsome porticoes often get outranked by Venice’s canals to the north, and its ancient towers skipped over for Florence’s palaces to the south.
But what the city may lack in postcard-perfect monuments, it makes up for with simpler, more hedonistic pleasures, like crumbly chunks of Parmigiano-Reggiano, the original cow’s-milk cheese aged on the outskirts of town; glasses of Lambrusco, a fun and fizzy local red; or forkfuls of tagliatelle al ragù, ribbons of fresh pasta tossed in slow-cooked meat sauce. Yet there’s a particular dish that Italians (and in-the-know tourists) travel from far and wide to enjoy in Bologna: tortellini.
These dainty pork-filled dumplings—which, legend has it, were modeled after Venus’s navel—have been made in and around Bologna since the 1500s. It’s a tradition kept alive by generations of dexterous female pasta makers such as Bologna-born sisters Daniela and Monica Zappoli. They own Le Sfogline, a pocket-size pasta shop where locals line up for tortellini made in the classic, painstaking way: by hand.
Monica, 53, has been making tortellini professionally since the shop opened 20 years ago. “This is a very tough job, physically and mentally,” she says with an exhale, taking a two-foot rolling pin into her calloused palms. “Today’s generation of girls isn’t interested in this type of work—in this sacrifice,” she continues, matter-of-factly, her whole body rocking back and forth as she kneads a ball of dough. She is not far off: With most tortellini mass-produced in factories these days, artisanal tortellini-making is in danger of disappearing with Monica’s generation of pasta mavens.
Tortellini are exceptionally fussy. According to the Zappoli sisters, the pasta dough must be used within hours of mixing it, and the filling must be minced by hand using a meat grinder in order to achieve the optimal flavor and texture in the final product. When it comes to shaping the pasta, it’s a race against the clock: the difference between perfectly shaped tortellini and a cracked, sludgy mess can come down to a couple of minutes.
At Le Sfogline, they make it look easy. One cook cuts pasta sheets into squares, while another doles out the filling—a blend of mortadella, prosciutto, pork loin, Parmigiano-Reggiano, eggs, and nutmeg. At the end of the assembly line, the squares are folded into triangles, whose ends get a final pinch to form a ring, and voilà—a tortellino is born. It will be sold the same day it was made, and if the customer is Bolognese, chances are it’s bound for brodo, a rich consommé made with chicken and veal bones.
When asked how many tortellini she and her three colleagues, all women, make each day at Le Sfogline, Monica deadpans, “I don’t want to know,” before throwing her head back with a laugh. But she acquiesced: the shop sells roughly 18,000 tortellini a day, which means each woman churns out a staggering 4,500—at a rate of 24 per minute. (Mind you, two employees are septuagenarians.)
That’s a lot of well-fed customers. “People call to thank us all the time— they know us, and they can taste the love that we put into this food,” said Monica. “I don’t hide that sometimes I would like to do something else. But at the end of the day, being a part of this Bolognese tradition gives me pride and keeps my two feet on the ground.”
The Zappoli sisters are accepting students for pasta-making classes at Le Sfogline in June and July of 2017. To reserve a spot, email them at sfoglinebo@gmail.com. The price is €70 ($75) per person for a three-hour class, dinner included.
