Handmade spaghetti

The hand spaghetti are the pasta they made in Chios before the arrival of the industrialized who arrived in the early 20th century. The Chian women made them with their own hands, that is why they were called handicrafts.

Today you can find them in a few taverns and of course in houses where older ladies have the time, patience and appetite to shape them, wrapping them around the spartan twig. Of course their taste is unbeatable.

I had the good fortune to meet recently in Kalamata, two ladies, sisters from Chios. One was permanently relocated to Kalamata and the other had come to visit. They gave me the pleasure to watch and even to participate in the kneading and shaping.

Recipe for hand-made spaghetti

The ingredients of the dough:

1 kg flour, 1/4 kg semolina

1/2 cup oil

1/2 tablespoon salt

twigs of asparagus

Instructions:

In a bowl we put the flour, the semolina, the oil and the salt.

Add lukewarm water and knead until the dough is firm. We made the dough many equal sized balls.

We each took a sprig of long asparagus and started to rub the dough around the asparagus with both our palms. When the spaghetti was formed, we removed the asparagus and the hole was left in the spaghetti.

We spread the spaghetti for a while to dry and the next day they would be ready.

We cooked some spaghetti immediately, completely fresh and threw it in boiling salted water.

We enjoyed them with tomato sauce and grated dry mizithra.

Υ.Γ. The hand-made spaghetti, out of their taste, also carries them stories listening to the time they are being created! Two hours of making friends, they will witness secrets that they will take with them… such as the complaint of one of the two ladies, with whom I made and go… "But you left…" A complaint that was heard many times and that made spaghetti to have at the bottom of their taste, a dose of bitterness, the bitterness of separation!