mylifestylenews: In Conversation With Massimo Mancini @ CEO of Mancini Farm

2014-06-19

In Conversation With Massimo Mancini @ CEO of Mancini Farm

How well do you know what kind of pasta to pick while you intend to cook a pasta dish and do it with the right sauce? Massimo Mancini, the CEO of Mancini Farm introduces their home grown produced pasta and team up with the Michelin Star restaurant 8 1/2 Otto e Mezzo Bombana to stimulate your taste bud by eating pasta in a different level. Mancini talks to mylifestylenews on how a good pasta dish shall be like......

The Mancini farm started in 1940 with my grandfather Mariano Mancini, who not only cultivated wheat, but also included the activities related to wheat threshing.

At the end of the 1970s, my father Giuseppe Mancini enlarged the farm from 20 to 150 hectares. During this period the main cultivation of the farm had been wheat and leguminous plants which were sold to transformation companies.

10 years after I finished my degree in agricultural studies in Bologna I have been carrying on the duties including wheat selection and studies on the way to improve cultivation techniques in order to achieve excellent quality of the final product.

For about 2 years after a trial period, we have decided to transform our wheat with help from a “master pasta maker”. Finally we have produced our very own special pasta.

The whole production comes exclusively from the wheat cultivated in our farm. We follow a production discipline to reduce environmental impact. We mainly grow two kinds of durum wheat – San Carlo and Levante, which are mixed together once harvested.

After harvest, the wheat is stored in the farm without any usage of chemcials. Fresh, natural and healthy are guaranteed.

After more than four months of seasoning, the wheat is from time to time ground in a very “soft” working process which gives a very low milling return (55%). This allows us to obtain very high quality bran.

Within very few days we process the bran under the traditional pasta making systems. We use bronze wire-drawing machines, which give the external surface of the pasta a very high level of porosity and roughness, allowing better sauce holding and cooking uniformity.

Once we have mixed and drawn the pasta, we let it dry on frames at 40°C for 45-60 hours based on its shapes. This technique allows us to keep the wheat unblemished, and retain its original flavour and all its al dente texture. At the same time, the technique also gives a particular thickness to the pasta that enables the sauce to cling to it. Once you open the package, smell it and feel it and u could tell the difference.

A good pasta dish shall be making you feel happy. It shall be understated and the pasta flavor of the wheat shall be fragrance, with great aroma and with consistency in a good texture.

My prefer way of eating pasta is with good olive oil (lots of them) to keep the pasta moist and yet bring out the best of the aroma. Tomato and basil is another good alternative and by adding butter, pepper and nutmeg is an ideal combination too. Carbonara is also one of my favorite pasta dishes.

By growing our own wheat may bring up the cost of production, it is more exclusive and we have a good quality control over it. We don't buy raw material and we do our own cultivation. San Carlo and Levante are from our best durum wheat ever produced by far.

The difference between the regular packed pasta and fresh pasta is the quality and the material used. They usually use common wheat and different grains to produce their pasta. Less in fragrance and aroma and difference in texture while cooked.

For Mancini pasta, it is more organic and comes in earth color, it is natural and the best composition is 1 litre of water x 100 gram of Mancini pasta and cook for 2 minutes in boiled water to get the best al dente texture.