The Orecchiette
The pasta factory ‘Pastificio al Mattarello’ boasts a perfect harmony of home-made tradition, craftsmanship, and cutting-edge technology. It was founded by Ligorio - De Carlo family, in Puglia, at San Vito Dei Normanni, in 1979. It produces more than 200 references of high quality dried and fresh pasta - in a wide selection of sizes and with the use of carefully selected superfine flours - and stuffed pasta, prepared with fresh and genuine ingredients.
This is a family business where the culture of the fine cuisine of Puglia has been enhanced for 35 years. Vito Ligorio, the owner, says: «Our mission consists in bringing on the tables quality products, and especially products obtained from Italian selected raw materials, mainly coming from our land of Puglia, without any possibility of ‘outrage’. Today the products realized by our company are not in the large-scale retail trade as a matter of choice, because the target market of our company is the Ho.Re.Ca sector, where quality should be the king, as well as the Delicatessen sector, which addresses consumers who are increasingly attentive to natural and quality products, combining them to the best cuisine, that everyone customizes according to one’s own taste and requirements».
The traditions of the Mediterranean cuisine
Pasta has always been considered essential for the healthy Mediterranean diet, and for this reason, the company was founded with the ‘healthy’ principle of realizing its products as a result of a careful selection of flours and raw materials of the lands in which the company operates, immediately ensuring its consumers the highest authenticity and best obtainable quality, and all this in order to avoid missing the old flavours and traditions of the Mediterranean cuisine.
The Strascinate
We are talking about handicraft products realized with superfine flours and flours of national Italian origin, such as, for instance: the long pasta naturally flavoured with garden rocket and hot pepper, black pepper, smoked with walnut, sepia, lemon, mint, seaweed, obtained with manual production, packaging, and weighing; or ‘Orecchiette’, Strascinate, ‘Foglie d’ulivo’, or such pasta extruded through bronze as ‘Tubettini’, excellent for a good fish soup, ‘Sedanini’, ‘Penne’, for whose production local superfine flours are used.
The Foglie d'Ulivo
Both finished products and raw materials are regularly subjected to rigorous quality controls in order to ensure full compliance with the current regulations on food hygiene.
All products are certified according to the ‘Prodotto italiano’ quality certification and ISO 9000, and they delight not only Italian consumers, but also the ones who live in Luxembourg, England, Germany, Belgium, United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, and Canada.
The packaging of these products consists of the classic transparent bag, in order to bring out their purity and genuineness. «For a little more ‘niche’ market, which prefers a different packaging, we propose a box with a window, in which the bag containing pasta is inserted with three different colours of boxes, according to the product contained; on the boxes are then proposed three different recipes, both in Italian and in English».
The Taglioline Nero Seppia
Vito Ligorio gives us a tip: tasting the typical and original 'Pizzicotti', obtained by imitating the ‘Panzerottino Pugliese’ - a typical product of South Italy, and in particular of Puglia - realized with the typical pizza dough, eaten fried, offered without the use of yeast, lard, or other types of leavening agent, in three different fillings: mozzarella and tomato; mozzarella, tomato, and spicy salami; cheese and spinach. It is excellent for buffets, hors d'oeuvres, appetizers.
And he gives us a delicious recipe of the regional tradition: the 'Orecchiette con cacioricotta e basilico': just brown garlic with olive oil, add peeled tomatoes and cook them for about 4 minutes; add a few leaves of fresh basil, then serve with ricotta cheese at will.
