Wednesday Night is P.A.S.T.A_N.I.G.H.T with Christina Zani
“The food is such a connection to my family and my sense of Italian-ness, as well as an avenue into that universal connection we all have to eating and sharing meals. Having the opportunity to bring photos of my ancestors, living and not, to this effort makes me feel deeply connected. I love how nostalgia can be so personal and specific while simultaneously having a shared cultural feeling.”
Interview by Sue Liedke with Christina Zani
Christina Zani makes and sells pasta through her Instagram account @p.a.s.t.a_n.i.g.h.t. She celebrates old school recipes and distribution methods, in a new school and contemporary way by using social media to share her offerings, communicate with neighbors, and arrange in person pickups. I recently had the pleasure of picking up some butternut squash cappellacci (which came with sage leaves for making a rich and earthy butter accompaniment) and dessert from her, and had a truly delightful culinary experience.
Christina describes herself as a “retired dancer and choreographer” who made a career shift after full time parenting during the pandemic. “I found myself seeking work with food and became an educator with Vetri Community Partnership. I primarily teach school aged kids cooking skills and also work across their other programs providing all types of communities access to healthy foods and recipes.” Her work now extends into neighbors kitchens, as they prepare her home made pasta for special meals.
How would you describe your “business” model to someone who wasn’t familiar with “Pasta Night”? (Or, how would you explain it to someone’s grandmother, who doesn’t use Instagram?)
In the simplest way I would say…I make pasta and sell it out of my house! Since it’s such a time consuming labor of love I take orders over the course of a few days and then make the food to order. People come pick it up on Wednesdays between 4-6 pm. Instagram is the vehicle I use to get the menus out and entice people with photos.
I love that your Instagram is a mix of upcoming menus, pasta pics, and family photos. I’m always entranced with the idea of nostalgia, and how it plays out in public forums like social media, and I think these family snapshots are a perfect example of that. How do you choose which pictures to include?
I’m so lucky to have a lot of photos that my Aunt Lou gave me years ago of her side of the family, she is my mother’s sister so mainly they are of my maternal line. Once I committed to the idea of making pastas for sale and using Instagram it felt really grounding and connected for me to use family photos. Previously I have been a much more quiet presence on social media, and once I got over the initial angst of starting to blast out a lot of posts I quickly realized that I felt most like myself in posting by reflecting my heritage out into the broader digital world. The food is such a connection to my family and my sense of Italian-ness, as well as an avenue into that universal connection we all have to eating and sharing meals. Having the opportunity to bring photos of my ancestors, living and not, to this effort makes me feel deeply connected. I am so happy that the photos are resonating with people,I love how nostalgia can be so personal and specific while simultaneously having a shared cultural feeling. Sometimes I feel like I choose a photo because it relates to the emotion of my post or has a little visual pun to it, and other times it’s a feeling that I don’t have a name for.
What’s your family’s history with the area?
My sister lives in North Jersey, which is where I was born, and most of our immigrated relatives and extended family lives in and around Massachusetts. My paternal grandparents came over from a small town called Vezzolaca which is in Emilia-Romagna/Provincia di Parma…the Zani’s. They settled in Wellesley, Ma. and had 3 children, including my father. All 3 siblings have passed now. My Nonna Zani is my “cover model” for Pasta Night, I have such a beautiful photo of her at her kitchen table making pasta. My mother and her brother came from the town of Bore, also in Emilia-Romagna/Provincia di Parma with my maternal grandmother Nonna Lena. (My mom’s town is on the mountain and my dad’s town is in the valley…they are about as far apart as South Philly and Fishtown). They settled in Bridgewater, Ma. Eventually my mother and father were introduced and had a beautiful love story that includes 4 children, of which I am the youngest.
Do you consider yourself a bit of a family historian?
Oh gosh, I try, but I am always grabbing at threads. The photos help me alot, and I love listening to the stories that especially my Mom and Aunt Lou tell about family here and in Italy and all the folks in their old Massachusetts neighborhood. My older siblings have a lot of experiences and memories that I don’t have with some older cousins and relatives, and on my dad’s side we did lose all those 3 siblings so a lot of those stories are harder to access. There are a lot of Zani side questions I wish I could ask and ephemera I would love to see. On both sides of the families we have A LOT of relatives!
Your recipes seem heavily influenced by your family history. Are there specific family members you look to for inspiration?
I mainly draw family cooking inspiration from my mother and her mother, Nonna Lena. It is her macchina that I use to make my pasta sheets. My mother was my greatest kitchen teacher and we work very well together. My Aunt Sandra and my mother’s cousin Irma are prolific pasta makers and they crank out major batches of delicious tortellini every Christmas. Aunt Sandra passed her recipe on to me last year and I was so honored. My sister is an incredible cook and makes the most insanely decadent lasagna I have ever tasted…mine comes in a close second. My oldest brother has a lot of good stories and connections to the food that Nonna Zani made and is an excellent cook/experimentalist in his own right. One recipe I am dying to try to make is what Nonna Lena called La Bomba aka Bomba di Riso. Aunt Lou and my mom have described it in great detail…maybe sometime this winter I’ll approach it. Apparently it is a giant rice coated torta that has stewed meats inside of it that are nestled into tomato and breadcrumb laced arborio rice that is then baked into a giant, crusty rice bomb of sorts!
Do you strictly adhere to recipes, or do you play around with ingredients?
I love to play around…I notice that folks really love stuffed pastas so I have been making alot of those. One favorite I made recently was a short rib ravioli with gochujang butter…total appropriation of Korean flavors that sat together so well with pasta. I am inspired by lots of chefs I follow on Instagram as well as flavors of food I have enjoyed over my lifetime and chefs that I have been fortunate to observe in kitchens where I worked as a server for many years.
To name some names: Little Fat Boy Frankie on Insta is an Asian and Italian food mashup master, Meryl Feinstein of Pasta Social Club was my first peek at Insta pasta making, Mateo Zielonka makes great videos and makes everything look easy. And Insta also has a huge community if brilliant pastamakers sharing work, it’s a gorgeous rabbit hole to fall down for a person like me. Charlie Kiely and Sharon Pachter were amazing real life teachers at The Grocery in Brooklyn, slinging 4 star meals out of a tiny kitchen to 12 elated tables. The Pasta Grannies books, Marc Vetri and Evan Funke’s books…so much education.
What’s your favorite pasta to make? Can you walk us through the process?
Whatever I’m making currently is my favorite!! I really adore making all the noodles, fillings and shapes. This week is a gigantic raviolo with a potato/mint/pecorino filling (shout out to Zielonka). I have been dying to try this…generally I make my fillings and refrigerate my sfoglia on Tuesday…This Tuesday I will start by slow roasting 20 potatoes. Next I will peel them and pass them through a ricer, while still warm I’ll add the grated pecorino and finely chopped mint leaves, as well as salt and pepper and nutmeg. Adjacent to that I will make about 4 big sfoglia (dough balls), mixing 00 flour and eggs/yolks slowly and then kneading that until it’s ready.
On Wed very early (5:30 am) I’ll pull the sfoglia out of the fridge to come to room temperature. Then I’ll set my table for pastamaking with cloths, cutting boards, la macchina for rolling out the dough. Dress, wake kids, do the before school routine with my husband’s help, get 2 kids off to 2 schools and a dog walked then I start rolling out the dough around 9am. Once I have enough large sheets rolled out, floured and covered, I will start to pipe in the filling. This is a fairly simple shape but delicate, it only requires one long fold and a long cut with a fluted cutter. Then I wrap it on itself and make another. Somewhere in this time I will assemble my packaging, pick up kids, eat something and drink more coffee, try to make myself look presentable for customers when they start to arrive. Inevitably something “goes wrong” each week so it’s always a wacky, floury clown show in here at some point of the day. I always listen to music while I work and sometimes have a friend or 2 over to chat at the pasta table.
Your handwritten menus, “dm to order”, and in person pickups speak to the scale of your operation. I understand you’re making small amounts, which usually sell out. Do you have any thoughts of expansion or going pro?
Mmm, I am too cautious and superstitious to really speak on that. But I will say I do have a soft dream of having a space away from my home that looks like a tiny fresh pasta shop that you might find in Italy. Sometimes I keep an eye out for the “right” piece of real estate, but it is pretty far from where I can picture it being sustainable at this point. Maybe you know someone who specializes in quaint, historic spaces? (wink-wink)
Interview by Sue Liedke
Images courtesy of Christina Zani // Follow @p.a.s.t.a_n.i.g.h.t
