THE secret to building a successful pasta-making business is all about freshness and taste, reports SARAH HUDSON
When Felix and Maria Colaneri were scouting for a new home for their young family in country Victoria, in the early-1970s, their choice was easy: Healesville.
"The area reminded us of the hills back home in Italy," Maria says.
"The town we come from (Frosolone in the Molise region in central Italy) is 450m above sea level and looks like the area here.
"Felix had spent his youth there as a shepherd, driving the sheep up the mountain. It was very, very rural, post-war peasant Italy."
Lucky for Healesville, the couple brought a slice of Italian culture with them, establishing Yarra Valley Pasta in the town's main street in 1997, now a thriving family business run largely by the couple's two children, Lisa and Michael.
Made using the traditional artisan-style pasta-making technique of "laminating", or rolling, their product is free from artificial colours and flavours and the range includes traditional varieties such as gnocchi, lasagna and chicken and veal ravioli, as well as a range of sauces.
For the more adventurous, there's also gorgonzola, proscuitto and dried fig ravioli, trout and goat's cheese ravioli.
To chat to the family is like taking part in a traditional Italian tableside discussion: they finish each other's sentences, interrupt and excitedly explain the process of pasta making.
While the product uses a pasta machine for production, Lisa says it mimics the process of handmade pasta.
"When mum makes it at home for special occiasions I always remember she would hang it to dry on a clothes horse ... . When she first started the business she hand-rolled it and had racks," says Lisa.
Michael, who manages production, chips in: "It can be very labour intensive, you need to be able to roll it for 15 to 20 minutes so the texture and consistency is perfect."
Using a pasta machine, he says, allows them to produce two tonnes a week, as opposed to about 4kg when the business first started.
Lisa, who is responsibile for the businesses' product development, says they also ensure a traditional product by sticking with tried-and-tested fillings in their ravioli.
"Just because you can fill something it doesn't mean you can start adding pork chops or whatever. You have got to think about it," Lisa says.
"You see some companies out there putting such a range of ingredients in and I think 'why do you do that? Why bother?'."
Customers often question the family's decision to blast chill and then freeze the pasta. But Lisa says this is the only way to instantly preserve the freshness and flavors.
"People say they don't want it frozen, but fresh. But they don't appreciate that unless they buy it straight from the machine and cook it, the only alternative is to snap freeze it so it doesn't deteriorate," Lisa says.
Maria's father came to Australia in 1952, leaving his two young children and wife back in Frosolone to establish a life in Melbourne.
When Maria, her brother and mother finally came to live in Australia five years later, they made a new home on a hectare of land in suburban Croydon, growing vegetables and rearing pigs and chooks.
It was pure coincidence that Maria met Felix - a concreter - who was also from the same town of Frosolone, and they married in 1968.
Being a traditional husband, Maria admits Felix was initially skeptical about his wife starting a business.
"But I was bored and I just needed to do something for myself," Maria says.
Yarra Valley Pasta, 321-325 Maroondah Highway, Healesville, or visit www.yarravalleypasta.com.au/ or ph: (03) 5962 1888.
