The company making artisanal pasta from Wairarapa-grown ancient grains
When a pest put paid to pea seed farming in South Wairarapa, a replacement crop was introduced that's producing delicious results.
A South Wairarapa company is using an ancient grain grown in the region to make dried pasta.
The only company of its type in New Zealand uses durum wheat grown by the Wairarapa Grains Collective.
The wheat was introduced to the area after a pest meant cropping for pea seeds was banned, company founder Monty Petrie told RNZ’s Nine to Noon.
Wairarapa's soils and climate are suited to durum wheat farming.
MPI
“Six years ago, we had a pea weevil and we grew a lot of seed peas here in the Wairarapa and we basically got quarantined.
“So Arable Research New Zealand and a few farmers got together to figure out what other crops they could grow while this ban was on.”
It turned out the conditions were ideal for durum wheat, he says. The grain, best known for use in pasta, had been grown in New Zealand since the 1940s until production petered out in the 1990s.
The cultivar grown at the bottom of the North Island is pre-1950s, he says.
Durum wheat being harvested in Wairarapa.
Supplied
“It's an ancient grain and it's got a really hard protein content, so it's got a lot of protein, but its protein is quite simple.”
That gives the pasta Monty and Sons process its bite, he says. He believes the pre-industrial variety he uses is also easier on the stomach.
Petrie says most durum imported to New Zealand are hybridised varieties that come from Australia and Canada.
“When you hear people saying 'oh I can go to Italy and France and I can eat the pasta and I'm not heavy, I don't feel gluggish after it'.
“That's probably the largest feedback that we get on our pasta.”
The production process for this simplest of foods is quite complex, he says.
The pasta made by Monty and Sons is extruded at low heat and slow dried over more than a day.
Supplied / Monty and Sons
A low heat process extrudes the product, preserving nutrients, before it's slow dried for 12 to 18 hours.
“The temperature and the pressure and timing is the key to getting the extrusion right and it will come out of a die which forms the shape.”
The drying process then needs to be perfect, he says.
“You need to dry the pasta perfectly the entire way through it's almost like concrete, you can't dry the outside first and then inside because it'll form cracks and it'll fall apart.”
The company makes five different shaped pastas, including fusilli, rigatoni and radiator, but not spaghetti which requires specialist equipment to get it to dry straight.
“They look really cool and really pretty, but they have really amazing texture and they hold sauce because it's extruded through bronze there's ripples all over the pasta.”
There is considerable appetite for the product, which the company sells through its website and via some local retail outlets, Petrie says.
“We’ve seen a huge, huge amount of people really excited, which is cool, and a lot of a lot of really good online orders happening as well.”
