Pasta Fresca All’Eugubina

You can consider yourself lucky if you have friends in Italy! Italians are the most thoughtful, generous people you will ever know, and I feel very lucky that I have some wonderful, dear friends in Umbria, the heart of Italy, in the small city of Gubbio. I am now on my third visit to this beautiful, charming town, and this time we are so lucky to be doing a gnocchi-making class at Pasta Fresca All’Eugubina!

A bit of history is in order, both about how I have come to be here for the third time, and about the city itself. My friend, Jamie (who is also my predecessor, the Latin teacher before me at my school), established an exchange with one of the schools in Gubbio 25 years ago, and ever since we have been traveling to visit each other in alternate years. Now that I am on my third trip chaperoning a group of Latin students, I cherish many deep, warm friendships with the teachers who have hosted us both as overnight guests and for delicious dinners in their homes!

Gubbio is often overlooked by travelers, with other Umbrian towns such as Perugia and Assisi drawing many more tourists. But Gubbio is very much worth visiting! The Iguvine Tablets, seven ancient bronze tablets inscribed with religious rituals and prayers, are housed in the Civic Museum in the Palazzo dei Consoli, and I am awed every time I see them. The oldest one dates to the 3rd century BCE and the youngest to the 1st century BCE, and they are displayed in two-sided rotating glass frames so people can view both sides. The older part of Gubbio, built into the mountain, has charming narrow streets for strolling and shopping, and as the slope meets the plain below, there are the ruins of the Roman theater to visit.

This is such a phenomenal excursion that all four of our children participated when they were in high school, and one of the Italian students, Francesco, not only has kept in touch with Ben, but has kept in touch with our entire family. And Francesco’s family owns the shop Pasta Fresca All’Eugubina. As I was organizing the trip this year and sent a message to Francesco to see if he would be in town, I asked if it might be possible to visit his family’s shop, something we hadn’t had a chance to do on previous trips. And he came up with the idea of a cooking lesson!

Francesco and his family graciously invited us into their shop on their day off and we all worked to make a huge batch of gnocchi! After Francesco’s father riced the potatoes and mixed in flour and salt (no egg in their recipe), the students jumped right in, making ropes of dough and cutting the gnocchi.

After all the gnocchi had been made, Francesco and his parents brought us downstairs for a pasta feast. Not only did we get to eat the gnocchi we made with a meat sauce, we also got to try meat-filled cappelletti with a different meat sauce, and ravioli filled with ricotta and spinach, served with a tomato-cream sauce. It’s a good thing we then walked off our lunch, climbing up the hill to the Palazzo dei Consoli!

Many thanks to Francesco and his parents for such a special workshop, and if you are ever in Gubbio and have access to a kitchen, you should plan your menu around pasta made by Pasta Fresca All’Eugubina!