“Pasta has become a ubiquitous food, present in regional diets around the world and available in a host of shapes, sizes, textures and tastes. Yet although it has become a mass-produced commodity, it remains uniquely adaptable to innumerable recipes and individual creativity.” Pasta: The story of a Universal Food, by Silvano Serventi and Francoise Sabban.
“Life is a combination of magic and pasta.” Federico Fellini.
Pasta is, to many, a subject not to be trifled with, least of all for Perth chef and restaurateur Joel Valvasori-Pereza.
Chef Joel Valvasori-Pereza at his Subiaco restaurant Lulu La Delizia.
When he opened what has, in a brief five years, become something of a Perth institution – Lulu La Delizia – it was to specialise in premium fresh pasta and the delights of Friuli and the Venetian spice route. It was a good move.
Nobody with talent, and an instinct for the public appetite, ever went broke opening a pasta-and-wine bar. Lulu has, therefore, been a great success for the chef, tucked away on a pedestrian walk as it is off Subiaco’s main high street, Rokeby Road.
Pasta isn’t the only reason; but it’s a significant part of the restaurant’s success and identity.
“We believe that pasta is one of the most beautiful crafts in the world, but is all too often lost in a wash of sauce,” he says in the restaurant’s manifesto.
“Sure, a bowl of pasta needs to be delicious, but people’s focus is far too often centred around the sauce. We really want to put the focus back onto the pasta itself.
“Hours of time is spent crafting and perfecting the pasta for every bowl that we serve. Not only do we want you to taste our delicious flavours, but we want you to be able to feel our dedication. Pasta should be textural with bite, while being silky and luxurious.
“We make all our pasta using a wide variety of techniques, equipment, recipes and flours. This is our craft.”
Valvasori-Pereza spent his formative career years in Melbourne at restaurants including Balzari, Sarti and a stint at Bar Lourinha – all renowned – before returning to his hometown of Perth in 2011 to help open and lead the kitchen at city stalwart Lalla Rookh, to critical acclaim.
It continues today
But in 2016 he opened Lulu’s – named in honour of his nonna, Luigia Valvasori, who emigrated in 1952 from the town of Casarsa della Delizia, in the province of Pordenone in the region Friuli-Venezia Giulia.
He describes it as “a small and raucous pasta-and-wine bar” and it is indeed fair to say its sense of specialisation in a field so many feel passionately about has earned the little restaurant a big reputation.
Valvasori proudly says Marco Pierre White considers Lulu’s one of his favourite restaurants in Australia.
The “small and raucous pasta-and-wine bar” in full swing.
The Backstory
“Tagliatelle al ragu … every region of Italy has its own,” says the chef for whom making – by hand – pasta each day, with a variety of common and indeed rare implements, is the foundation of his business.
“For the layman, the nuances of each recipe or style are often ignored and lumped into the generic ‘bolognese’ or, even worse, the French term ‘bolognaise’.
“My Nonna Luigia’s recipe is one that is very special, not only to my family, but also in context to our cuisine at Lulu’s.
“It hails from the Pordenone about 230km northeast from Bologna or, in the pre-car era, two days’ walk.
“It is fair to say that there is little of Bologna in this ragu.”
The produce
“Cooking good food is all about relationships and being able to source the best ingredients” is Valvasori-Pereza’s take on it all.
“Your ability as a cook to be able to extract and harness flavour can only be bettered by the quality and freshness of the produce you use. This doesn’t mean you have to spend every Saturday morning at a farmers’ market getting to know your celery’s backstory. It just means smaller suppliers can source fresher produce, more often. So, find a good purveyor and build a relationship with them.
“When it comes to buying meat, we have a great, longstanding relationship with David Torre and his team in Northbridge.”
Torre is indeed a butchery and meat business with a rich heritage and strong reputation in Western Australia. “You need to have a relationship with a business like this so whether it’s beef, pork or veal, you know they will only supply you with the best available.”
For the all-important pasta-making, Lulu’s uses eggs from pasture-raised hens. The eggs come from two farms in the southwest of WA, in Harvey and Busselton. The chickens roam free over 75ha of land by day, before coming indoors to roost at night.
“Happy chickens make happy eggs, which, in turn, makes more flavourful pasta. And you want to be able to taste the richness of eggs in our pasta.
The tipo 00 flour they use – which refers to how finely the wheat is milled – is from Molino Iaquone in Lazio, Italy, the province embracing Rome.
The Laquone family have been producing flour for 70 years and are highly regarded by some of the leading culinary institutions in Italy, such as the Associazione Verace Pizza Napolitana, the people who put the rubber stamp – or not – on what constitutes “real” Neapolitan pizza throughout the world.
Tendrils of tagliatelle, in process, at Lulu La Delizia.
The Method
The house ragu at Lulu’s is made with a combination of pork and veal mince, a soffrito of garlic, rosemary and sage, onion, celery, carrot, parsley, a good splash of red wine, spices, some fresh tomato and/or some passata, depending on the time of the year. A good ragu usually takes at least a couple of hours to make depending on the coarseness and fattiness of the meat.
“This may not be a radical or arcane dish; however, I consider this ragu to be a great cooking lesson in the building blocks of our family cuisine, and the backbone of how we cook and develop flavour through a lot of our dishes at Lulu’s,” says the chef.
“It teaches a lot of lessons in extracting flavour through frying garlic, the releasing of natural oils and aromas from herbs, the sweetening and softening of onions and vegetables and, most importantly, the part that all these aspects play in creating deliciousness and balancing food.”
The pasta dough is made quite firm – Valvasori-Pereza says the restaurant’s recipe is too firm for domestic equipment – and is painstakingly worked and laminated for strength and bite before being sheeted. After this process, the pasta is cut by hand using a Japanese soba (noodle) knife.
The twist
With the use of cinnamon (which hails back to the Venetian spice trade routes through to Eastern Europe), and the liberal use of aromatic herbs rosemary and sage, this ragu engages your senses even before the plate arrives.
“As a child, I always knew what we were having for dinner from the beautiful aromas coming from the kitchen as I walked through the door.”
The price
“Of course, the price of the dish is dictated not just by the ingredients, but in our case more by the skilled labour involved in producing pasta of this quality,” he says.
It’s $33 on the menu.
Lulu La Delizia’s tagliatelle with Ragu.
Recipe
For the sauce
Ingredients
● 250g pork mince
● 250g veal mince
● 125g olive oil
● 3 cloves garlic
● 2 sticks rosemary, chopped
● Half a bunch sage, chopped
● 1 large onion
● 1 bay leaf
● Knob of butter
● 3 sticks celery
● 1 large carrot
● Pinch chilli powder
● Pinch cinnamon powder
● Glass of red wine (plus at least two for yourself)
● 1 diced Roma tomato
● 100g tomato passata
● Handful of chopped Italian parsley
● Salt
●Freshly ground black pepper
Method
In a heavy-based pot, heat oil to a medium heat. Add garlic and fry gently until it starts to buckle and go lightly golden on the edges. Add the rosemary and sage, and briefly fry to release the oils and aromas. Add onions, butter, bay leaf, chopped parsley and some salt and pepper.
On a medium heat, allow onions to sweat until translucent and they start to become sweet. Add celery, carrot and sweat until the carrots soften slightly. Add red wine and spices. Allow to cook for a few minutes for the liquid to cook out then add both the tomatoes and the passata. Adjust seasoning.
Using a wooden spoon, start to incorporate the minced meat into the hot sauce, separating the grains of meat as they heat up. Re-adjust the seasoning. Bring the sauce back to the simmer. With a lid ajar on the pot, simmer the sauce until the meat becomes tender and the oils start to separate from the sauce. Check and adjust seasoning as required.
Making the cut: tagliatelle made fresh at Lulu La Delizia.
Basic Pasta Dough
This is a really basic dough recipe that’ll suit most pasta machines and skill levels. Our commercial pasta dough at the restaurant will break both your machine and your arms.
Ingredients
● 5 large free-range eggs
● 500g tipo 00 flour
● Pinch of salt
● Tablespoon of olive oil
Method
On a wooden board, pour flour into a mound. Make a well in the centre and pour in the other ingredients. Using your fingertips, start to incorporate the flour into the egg mix until a dough starts to form. You don’t want the dough to be sticky so you might need a touch more flour depending on the size of the eggs.
Once the dough is formed, continue to work the dough with your hands to start to develop strength in the gluten; this is hard work and can take up to 20 minutes to develop a nice strong and smooth dough. Place the dough in a plastic container and allow it to rest on the bench for 20 minutes before rolling.
Depending on the size of your pasta machine and skill level, the dough might need to be cut into either 2 or 4 pieces to make it easier to work with. First, use a rolling pin to make the dough thin enough to get through the thickest setting. Roll the dough through a few of the settings before book folding the dough back in on itself. Now roll the dough out in the opposite direction. Repeat this process at least a few times and you will see the dough starts to take on a smooth sheen.
After the sheen starts to appear, you are able to start rolling the sheets out to their final thickness. This is usually around the 1-2 mark on most pasta machines. The sheet should just start to appear translucent. It is a good habit to roll the sheet through twice on your last setting. This will help give you a true thickness with less pullback from the gluten.
Cut your sheets to about 30cm in length, and dust well with flour. You can either use your pasta machine’s tagliatelle/fettuccine cutter to cut the pasta or, if you’re more adventurous, you can attempt to cut the pasta with a knife like we do at the restaurant. Generally, we’ll stack up three sheets at a time, dusting well in between with flour, before envelope folding the pasta into thirds before cutting with a sharp knife. Be sure not to apply too much pressure to the dough as you don’t want to cause it to stick.
Fresh tagliatelle usually takes about 3 minutes to cook in rapidly boiling salted water.
