From today, the strichetto has its official recognition as a traditional dish of Emilian cuisine. The typical pasta created with the scraps of the pastry historically it arises from peasant poverty and from the need to recover the scraps of tortellini and tortelloni sheets, which the housewives then kept in a glass jar with a cork stopper in the showcases of the Bolognese kitchens. Testimony of poor and recycled cuisine, the strichetto is a sort of ancestor of the current commercial farfalle and becomes the thirty-first recipe deposited at the Bologna Chamber of Commerce by the Italian Academy of Cuisine from 1972 to today.
WHAT IS THE STRICHETTO
This type of pasta is also made using the sheet directly cut into squares of 4-4.5 cm per side. A simple pressure with forefinger and thumb is enough in the center of the dough and then jagged the edges with the "spronella", the pasta cutter wheel. In the text solemnly deposited with deed of the notary Pietro Zanelli and which will now be kept in the Chamber of Commerce together with the original recipes for ragù, tortellini, tagliatelle and lasagne, we read: “Used in the Bolognese, not so much for the tables of the nobles or the rich bourgeoisie, but for a poor table, with a prevalent use outside the city in the lower peasantry, because it is precisely a recovery dish and easy to prepare, often adding nettle or spinach to the pastry dough, for the green variant. These clippings, not very large, are obtained starting from the classic ovoid shape of a normal pastry obtained from a mixture of flour and water according to the classic recipe (ingredients for 4 people: white flour 00 gr. 400, 4 whole eggs, one pinch of salt). They were a food for those who worked in the fields or in the paddy fields; placed already cooked in the bowl in which the cooked seasoned pasta went in the lower part and under the lid, in a special space, the omelette or boiled potatoes; certainly not the meat.
To season the Bolognese strichetti it was used, and is still used, the normal Bolognese sauce or a sauce made with asparagine both white and with the addition of tomato sauce. Another traditional condiment is the one with peas, pancetta, cream and Parmesan. In recent decades, consumption has increasingly oriented towards mechanized industrial productions, today called "Farfalle", proposed by the most renowned producers of both dry egg pasta and semolina; recently also made with kamut flour”.
The ceremony was attended by Daniele Passini, Vice President of the Bologna Chamber of Commerce, Giorgio Palmieri, Delegate of the Italian Academy of Cuisine – Bologna Section of the Bentivoglio family, Alessandro Menzani, Secretary of the Bolognese Strichetto Confraternity and President of the Pro Loco Casalecchio Insieme, Andrea Segré, President Fig Foundation. To arrive at the repository, the Accademia Italiana della Cucina – Bologna section of the Bentivoglios conducted long and complex historical and social studies also making use of the expertise of the Brotherhood of the Strichetto. Confirmation thus arrived from the Academy, the cultural institution of the Italian Republic: strichetti are an integral and fundamental part of the typical and traditional specialties of classic Bolognese cuisine.
