In the northern Italian provinces of Bergamo and Brescia (Lombardy), the casoncelli fresh pasta is a serious business. As with all traditional dishes, each family has its own version and they are ready to swear that theirs is the original one. Moreover, this recipe also varies according to the town and the valley, with different names and variations. What is certain is that Nonna Ida’s carunsei (as they are called in Ambivere, near Bergamo), have really made history being mentioned several times in different texts. Actually, the recipe comes from Nonna Adelina, Ida’s mother-in-law. In 1932 Adelina and her husband Leone opened the Trattoria Visconti, even though it had been a meeting place to enjoy food for some time already. Basically, you can experience the same feeling here today.
In the past the casoncelli were eaten only for the Festa della Madonna, the second Sunday of September; or they were prepared for weddings. The ladies were called to cook them as if they were a catering service, almost always together with the poja buida (boiled hen). From the 1960s onwards, with the arrival of affluence, casoncelli were no longer just the dish for special occasions; they became part of the weekly diet.
Preparation is a Tuesday ritual
Female aunts and cousins were summoned for the occasion and the rosary was recited. Then, with the passage of time, from a religious moment it became an increasingly social gathering, during which they gossiped about the town, about who was getting married, who had died, who was still in the hospital and other news. Moreover, it was a pretext to show that “we were going to eat well that week.” So especially during the winter, the preparation of the casoncelli was made to coincide with the killing of a hen, which was hung in a window. Then the sequence of its consumption would begin: blood pie on the first day; boiled legs and head on the second; offal risotto on the third; thighs and wings on the fourth; then boiled hen, and so on...
This is how it still is at the Trattoria Visconti. Every Tuesday the aunts and cousins are summoned, like aunt Marisa, a retired teacher who entertains during these occasions. Together they all prepare casoncelli, led by the lady of the house, Fiorella, Nonna Ida’s daughter. She carries on the business together with her husband Giorgio, an expert mushroom hunter, and her sons Roberto, in the kitchen, and Daniele, the sommelier in the dining room.
Unfortunately, the tradition of the casoncelli is being lost. Times are changing and most people tend to buy them ready-made in stores or enjoy them only when they eat out. All the more reason to talk about people who still devote time to preparing this dish because, above all, it means still giving importance to sharing.
Nonna Ida’s recipe for Casoncelli fresh pasta (4
servings)
For the pasta dough: 7 oz flour
2 oz durum wheat semolina
1 whole egg
1 tablespoon of oil
1/3 C water
For the filling: 4 oz breadcrumbs
3 oz grated parmesan
3 oz ground meat for salami
7 oz of roasted beef
½ oz amaretti cookies
¾ oz soaked raisins
½ clove of garlic, minced
1 tsp. chopped parsley . 1½ tsp.
butter - salt - pepper - nutmeg - cinnamon stock
For the sauce:
2 ½ oz butter
2 ½ oz cubed pancetta
4 oz grated parmesan
sage
- nutmeg
Recipe preparation:
Brown the minced meat, the salami meat, the garlic and the parsley with a pat of butter and cook for an hour, adding some stock. Allow to cool and add the breadcrumbs, the parmesan, the egg, the chopped raisins, the crumbled amaretti, pepper, salt and spices. Let it rest (it’s better if prepared a day in advance). For the pasta: mix the white flour, semolina flour, egg, warm water and oil on a pastry board or in a bowl. Let it rest for half an hour. Roll out the dough to a height of 1 mm, cut out discs, fill with the filling and close them by pinching the two ends. Boil the casoncelli in salted water for 8 to 10 minutes. Drain and season with grated parmesan and butter that has been melted and cooked to a light brown with pancetta and sage. Heed Nonna’s words: the water for the pasta dough must be warm; the dough must be very thin, and the filling not too sweet. Then, when you close them, do not use your nails, otherwise the casoncelli might break while cooking.