Bigoli, Bigolaro, Bigolarist

When it comes to entertaining, I believe in memorable meals. No need for expensive ingredients or fancy recipes - all you need is something that people will eat with pleasure and remember a long time. On Saturday I had a couple friends over for lunch and decided to offer them a typical peasant dish from Veneto. You won't be able to cook this just yet, as it calls for a bigolaro, my largest pasta-making tool so far. It was the first time I used it, but I learned how to make bigolis like a duck to water.

As my guests arrived, I served a fava bean Parmesan soup made with beans I bought 2 hours before at my farmers' market, along with toasted sourdough bread covered with an emulsion of olive oil, lemon juice and bottarga. As they were finishing this, I tell them: Guys, I'm awfully sorry but I just realized we are short of pasta. Would you mind giving me a hand?

Out comes my bigolaro, this guest-powered pasta extruder from Northern Italy. You see, the people of Tuscany and Veneto were much taken with macaronis but couldn't make them with the soft wheat they grow up there. So they invented this pasta press that has so much pressure in it you can make proper macaronis using regular flour. But the favorite pasta shape is a sort of fat spaghetto called 'bigolo' - hence the name of my new friend - the bigolaro, I said.

My friend Peter is the first sit on it and bravely starts turning the huge levers. Does this make me a bigolarist?, he asks.

As the piston goes down, a lady guests replaces Peter and continues to turn. It gets harder now, and suddendly we see no less than 28 fat spaghetti emerge from the bottom. I rub them in flour as they come out so that they don't stick.

Each guest proceeds in turn until all my dough is gone. Not one of the 28 spaghetti has broken, and by now each is as long as the room.

I go down to the kitchen and come back 10 minutes later with the freshly guest-made bigoli in duck ragł. As they say in Veneto, Arna lessa e bigolo tondo alla sera rabalta el mondo (Round bigoli and poached duck make everybody happy).

Let me now show you how it works.

THE NIGHT BEFORE, I set out to prepare the duck ragł. The traditional Veneto recipe has very precise stipulations. Choked duck boiled in stock, ragł made from the duck's offals and the pasta boiled in the duck stock.

Add your aromatic garnish - carrots, onion, bay leaf, clove, celery stick and herbs. Do not forget some salt.

Bring to a boil, skim, cover and simmer for 2 hours. Fish out the duck, filter the stock and store overnight in the fridge.

THE NEXT DAY, the duck fat dissolved in the stock will have congealed on top. Remove the whitish top layer delicately with a laddle. You can pour it in a glass to see better how fat the duck was. In the days of yore, you would not discard this fat but leave it in the stock or add it back to the ragł for a more nutritious meal. But duck fat rendered like this does not taste like much, and were are not in the days of yore anymore. Discard.

Prepare your ingredients for the ragł itself - more of the same: carrots, bay leaf, garlic, onion, celery stick, the duck offal and a stick of cinammon, the Venitian touch.

Finely dice the vegetables and reserve aside.

Meet the gizzard, the strangest organ in the duck. It is the bird's pre-stomach and it has more abdominal muscle than the Gubernator. You need to cut it with a bad knife, because inside there is a green sack with the bird's last meal, including little stones. Remove it and keep the red muscle all around the sack.

The traditional ragł for bigoli con l'arna only uses the duck offal (gizzard, heart and liver). You may add the rest of the duck too but don't discard the offal, you would be missing all the fun. Make sure there is absolutely no trace of anything green on the duck's liver - you don't want any bile in your ragł, that would ruin your day.

Chop the offal as thin as you can.

The duck flesh is traditionally served a second course with mostarda, but nowadays people commonly add it to the ragł. That's what I do here. Carve the flesh from the carcass ...

... and chop it into bits. You can discard the carcass or use it to make more duck stock, but frankly with the quantity I already had on hand, it was a dead duck to me.

Here is your mise en place - it's important to get all your ducks in a row before the action.

Heat a little olive oil in a large pot and fry the chopped onions until soft, then add the carrot, garlic and celery.

Fry for a minute, move to one side ...

... then add the offal and toss until it turns grey all over.

Add the cinammon and bay leave...

...and the tomato.

Bring to a boil, cover and reduce heat to the lowest setting. Simmer for 45 minutes.

Add the duck meat shortly before serving.

If the sauce is too runny you can thicken it with a little butter, cream or mascarpone. Don't forget that we have removed most of the duck's fat, including its skin, and that this ragł is way lighter than what Venitian farmers used to make. You can afford a little milk fat.

You saw my meal's finale at the top of the article, and I just showed you how I cooked the ragł the day before. Now let me show how to make the bigoli dough. It is no duck soup but with proper instructions you'll be successful.

Traditionally bigoli were made from regular white or wholewheat flour and sometimes even with buckwheat flour. These are all inferior flours when it comes to pasta making and were seen as a cheaper substitute for the durum wheat semolina from the South of Italy. The present day gourmet who can afford a bigolaro is thus faced with a choice. Either go for the traditional regular flour bigoli and have softer pasta, or add a little durum wheat semolina to give the pasta more bite. Present day Venitian bigolarists often use a mix of both. I used 3oz / 100gr durum semolina per guest...

... and the same amount of regular white flour. Add one egg per guest, a bit of salt and a teaspoon olive oil.

Mix until smooth, adding a little water or flour as needed to get the hardest dough you can still knead. To get proper bigolis you need a super-dry, concrete-block sort of dough. Do not try this with the smooth dough for tagliatelle or your bigoli will stick to one another as they exit the bigolaro.

Ball the dough, cover in foil and set aside until the guests arrive.

To see how we made the bigoli, go to the top of the article.

Bring the duck stock to a rolling boil, adding water if needed. Plunge the bigolis in the stock in one go (don't forget we have 28 bigolis each as long as the room - you can't do this by batch!).

You recall from the start of the article that I rubbed the bigolis with flour as they came out so they wouldn't stick. Unfortunately I didn't use coarse polenta flour/cornmeal as is required but used plain white flour. Much of it accumulated at the bottom of the dish and fell over my pot right after the bigoli went into the water. Big flour cloud, the stove all white and the bigolis started to stick to one another around the flour clumps. Please laugh at me all you can and use my mistake so that you won't have to make the same.

Up with the Kuhn Rikon pasta pot strainer ...

... and into a warm empty serving pot or dish.

Cover with the ragł and serve. See the start of the page to see the actual meal. Many times I had poor results when entertaining with homemade pasta, but this one was a roaring success with deliciously al dente pasta, just enough bite to be firm under the tooth, a delicate egg taste and the gorgeous ragł. For a moment, I felt like the capo di tutti i capi.

You can buy a bigolaro directly from the only manufacturer left in the world - that I know of - Bottene Brothers in Vincenza, Italy. Write an email to Alessandra Bottene at info@bottene.net and she'll send you a pro-forma invoice, pay and they'll ship. You can find the same at a much higher price in various online shops. Bear in mind that the model I have is the best looking but not the most convenient as you have to wind up the lever entirely to refill. It comes with a little bank you sit on in order to have enough leverage to turn the levers. Please consider that the wood comes untreated and looks like cheap, poorly finished pinewood. My friend Virgilio sanded the edges and varnished it for me. The bigolaro itself is of very high quality and I recommend it to anybody with an interest for homemade pasta and unusual cookware. I paid €200 including shipping.