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Dear Ron,

Tomorrow we leave this land where eating is an art. And we’re tak- Lina, a tiny woman with powerful forearms, has been cooking for
ing some pieces of Italy with us. We’ve wrapped and rewrapped the Donati family for the past 40 years and is well known for her
our bottles of Montestigliano olive oil so we can remember that pasta prowess. According to Luisa, she beat the renowned chef
resplendent day in the Tuscan olive grove. They will be buried Jamie Oliver in a pasta cook-off when he came to Le Marche a
deep in our luggage, near the bottles of 18-year-old Modena bal- couple of years ago.
samic vinegar, so sweet you could drink it as an aperitif, and we
did. The wedges of Parmesan cheese, we’re taking on board with The key to Lina's ethereal pasta is in the rolling and the rolling
us. We’ve checked with customs about bringing all this back to and the rolling. And then more rolling of the dough. We watched
the United States. Aged cheese is OK; soft cheese is not. And it’s Lina wield a rolling pin half her height back and forth over the
not a problem if the bottles are checked through in luggage. yellow dough for more than 20 minutes, periodically hanging
the ever-thinning pasta over the pin to see if she’d achieved the
But we couldn’t leave without telling you about the single best necessary translucency. Finally when she was satisfied, she rolled
bite of our trip. After 10 days of eating our way through Italy -- the dough into a long tube and cut it in slices which would later
sampling a delicious waist-expanding amount of food from the unfurl into fettucine. We wish we could have taken some of that
country’s farms and restaurants -- this is a very high bar. Kind of home. Or Lina. (We asked her, but she said she had a family to
like picking the best picture at the Louvre. feed.)

So here goes. Here is our Mona Lisa of eating in Italy: fresh pasta Our final meal in Le Marche featured almost-as-good pasta and
with the simplest of tomato sauces. And the truth is, the pasta about a hundred other courses cooked by the Accademia del Pad-
would have won even if there had been no sauce. We have eaten lot. This is a fancy title for a jovial group of nine local guys who
in some of America’s best Italian restaurants and nowhere have get together to cook, eat, drink wine and sing. On our last night
we tasted a pasta as delicate as what Lina Mazzanti made for us they took over the Donati kitchen and created a monumental
at the Palazzo Donati, a 17th century stone mansion on the main feast that made all the other monumental feasts seem miserly.
square of Mercatello sul Metauro.
This time “Volare” was replaced by the Accademia’s boisterous
The Plazzo is the Donati’s ancestral home on their mother’s side. and wine-infused chef-singers, who serenaded Louisa’s guests
We caravanned here to the Le Marche region from Montestigliano with songs and jokes. By evening’s end most of us were tipsy, and
to get a more complete taste of Italy. Luisa Donati holds one-week all of us were full. Once again.
tours at the Palazzo that often start with a bowl of Lina’s pasta.
Love,
J&J

Lina Mazzanti making
pasta at the Plazzo Donati.

74 Wine Dine & Travel Winter 2015