It’s a dough made by hand with flour and eggs, worked with a rolling pin on a wooden board.
The Romagna ‘sfoglia’ is the base for many kinds of ‘minestre’ a word that in Romagna includes all first courses, bouillon dishes too.
This dough is worked by hand till becomes soft and smooth, but still a bit rough to be soaked up with sauce; when almost dried can be cut in different shapes (squares, diamonds, rounded, stripes etc.) according to the kind of ‘minestra’ that must be prepared (always by hand).
The traditional sauce for the home made pasta is ‘ragù‘, a meat sauce of pork, chicken or beef meat fried with a mix of vegetables (cellery, carrots, onions) and stewed with white wine and tomato sauce.
The best bouillon for the home made pasta is prepared with capon meat. Adding spinach to the pasta can be prepared a special green pasta, baked in the oven.
Home made pastas: cappelletti, passatelli, tagliatelle, pappardelle, tortelli, tortelloni, garganelli, strozzapreti, lasagne verdi, tagliolini…
Spoja lorda
A traditional recipe from Brisighella, this ‘sfoglia‘ is prepared in the usual way but it’s cut in small squares, filled with ‘squaquerone’ (a fresh and soft local cheese) and parmisan, and not divided as for ‘cappelletti’ or ‘ravioli’.
The housewives used to prepare the ‘Spoja lorda’ when they were short of time and couldn’t prepare more elaborated kinds of minestra, like ‘cappelletti’, or to use the left-overs of ‘sfoglia’.