stocking the pantry:
EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING
Sfoglini is a Brooklyn-based pasta company that has made its name producing small batch, fresh extruded pastas in a range of creative shapes and flavors. Founded by Steve Gonzalez, who has cooked at some of New York's most revered restaurants — Insieme, Company, Hearth, Roberta’s, and Frankies Spuntino to name a few — and Scott Ketchum, a creative director and graphic designer, the company fills a niche market in New York’s competitive craft food scene by focusing on made-to-order pasta. According to Ketchum, the name, Sfoglini, is reference to the many Italian grandmothers who are the true experts at hand making fresh pasta. Gonzalez and Ketchum chose the name to honor these unsung cooks and, at the same time, signal their desire carry forward and pass on their techniques and traditions.
cast aside and unusual flavors like stinging nettles, ramps, saffron, sauvignon blanc grape skins, and garlic scapes are extruded into shapes like trumpets, “radiators,” and reginetti. These non-flour ingredients are pulverized, then sifted through a tamis and folded into the pasta dough. Once the pasta is extruded through the traditional bronze dies, it is air dried for anywhere from 48 to 96 hours and hand packaged in date-stamped bags. Our favorite flavor, not just for nostalgic reasons but because it’s truly delicious, is the Everything Bagel Fusilli. In a hat tip to the quintessential everything bagel found across New York, poppy seeds, sesame seeds, garlic, onion, and salt are added to the base dough, creating a flavor that is so classically New York that it is sold at the New-York Historical Society’s museum store.
Gonzalez, who heads up the kitchen, produces a full $8.00 for a 1 lb. bag. Available in shops throughout line of organic semolina pastas in popular shapes and New York City and online at http://sfoglini.com/shop. noodles, like cavatelli, bucatini, and fusilli. He truly html excels, however, when the constraints of tradition are
16 | spensermag.com | winter 2013 - 2014