Italian Harvest… Starts with 6 of Italy’s best Artisan Pasta Makers

This book of makers is truly Small Batch and Artisan from all over Italy.    Think Real Artisan Pasta, all the ingredients to make  Authentic Sauces, Prepared Sauces and Regional Delicacies. We have been successful helping clients build a store set that sells through with remarkable consistency.

The best thing about the store set we recommend is that it is a visual thing. You don’t even need to demo it just display it properly. 

 

 

Artisan Pasta is all about Italian Organic Durum Wheat & Ancient Grains, a slow traditional production process, shapes and colors.  Your better customers will love the pasta.  They’ll taste the difference with Italian Harvest and they will come back to buy it time and again!

 

 

 

These are shockingly good and so easy…new product from Marella that is the best pasta maker in Italy.  It is an all in one pasta and sauce…. add 4 cups of hot water and a TBS of  olive oil then stir for 18-30 minutes depending on the ingredients (Heirloom Lentils take a bit longer) and also accounting for altitude (we live at 4600 ft.) and it is ready. I finish with a drizzle of bright Olive Oil and a touch of salt and some grated cheese. 

Plus there are new edition on the website….  ItalianHarvest.com Click to View

 

John Blount who created Italian Harvest  grew up in Italy and speaks the language like a native which sadly I did not pick up from my parents.  In his misspent youth he hitchhiked and rode his motorcycle all over Italy.  This gave him a good sense of the food culture. His intimate knowledge of the peninsula has had a positive influence on the way he selected the products for the catalog. As further proof Italian Harvest has won close to  50 SOFI Awards.

What I like most about Italian Harvest’s book is that is that it covers the basics of Pasta, Risotto and the the raw ingredients around which professional and home chefs can create really delicious authentic meals. Most of the classic recipes are really simple but they are ingredient centric.  You just cant replicate the terroir where these ingredients come from.  Plus their farming practices are better.

The makers themselves represent the Slow Food movement at it’s best never straying from tradition in order to save a few pennies. Everything in the book is the real deal.

 

 

It is all  about the flavor, mouth feel and texture when it comes to these artisan foods. One of the tell-tale signs that you are looking at “Real Artisan Pasta” is that in its uncooked state it has a rough texture.  You can feel it just by running a finger nail over it, even through a cellophane wrapper.  Industrial pasta by comparison feels very smooth to the touch. Once they’ve have had pasta of this quality consumers tend to adopt it. 

My older sister is a master of Italian Emigrant Cooking having picked it up from our mother who had an encyclopedic knowledge of the subject having frown up in NYC in a family that owned Italian Markets.  Anna Marie fine tuned her style with a number of classes in Italy.  Today she just loves showing off our mother’s recipes made with ingredients from Italian Harvest to her friends in Florida. 

 

 

Funny thing is you don’t have to be a total geek to tune into it.  Your better customers will figure it out the first time they try it!  I actually have had customers tell me “it tastes more like real food than pasta”.  

Ranise (below) is one of the best Olive Oil producers on the planet (96 Points in the Flos Olei Guide). The olive varietal they are famous for is Taggascia  grown in the hills above the Med in Liguria.  It makes a very pretty olive oil and they are great snacking olives.  The family are sensational farmers and all the little jars are just packed with flavor!  Basil or Ligurian Pesto is a regional specialty which means it doesn’t get any better than this.

 

Long story but we have had to deal with a certain amount of Gluten Intolerance.  So for a couple of years and intermittently there after we were forced to experiment with Gluten Free Pasta. Most of it tasted like cardboard. 

It was a happy day when we discovered La Rosa Gluten Free Pasta.  Slow extrusion through bronze dies and 2-4 days of drying at low temperatures just like our other Artisan Makers in the book but made with Organic Corn and Rice.  They are a really wonderful maker and you’d be doing your customers who require Gluten Free products a huge favor.

This is a really important sub-category in your pasta set as the number of consumers that are gluten intolerant is vast. 

 

 

So there are a couple of options here… You can take a look at the best seller list or visit the website to see the entire book. Prices on the site are at 50% GM on the site. The Price List Link will show you distributor pricing.