Delicate strands bring Italy stateside

In Season: Noodles

By Liz Crain

The Portland Tribune, Feb 22, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Courtesy of Nonna’s Noodles

Sarah-Beth Censoni-Johnson uses unbleached wheat flour and local eggs in her Nonna’s Noodles, which are based on her grandmother’s recipe and available at area farmers markets.

Ever since she can remember, Sarah-Beth Censoni-Johnson has made pasta with her dad’s mom, now 88 years old.

When Censoni-Johnson was a little girl, her father’s parents visited every summer from Florida. During those summers she and her nonna (Italian for grandmother) spent plenty of time in the kitchen mixing, kneading and hand-cutting fresh, tender noodles that they’d hang on racks and cook throughout the day.

Censoni-Johnson, who grew up in Michigan with a Danish mother and an Italian father, moved to Portland five years ago with her husband. She worked as a veterinary technician and as a receptionist before she began making a living selling her Nonna’s Noodles at Portland-area farmers markets.

For the past two years, Censoni-Johnson has prepared lasagna, fettucine, pappardelle, linguine and angel hair noodles based on her nonna’s recipe. Nonna’s Noodles are sold in 4-, 6- and 8-ounce bags and cost roughly $1 an ounce.

These aren’t your standard dense and starchy noodles. They’re made with unbleached wheat flour, local free-range eggs from Toadstone Farms in Washington, and water.

They are incredibly thin and delicate and cook to al dente in the blink of an eye. Censoni-Johnson says: “The angel hair takes a minute to a minute and a half to cook. In the beginning people wouldn’t listen to me and the noodles would just dissolve. People are used to the 10- to 12-minute box of pasta.”

Noodles take northern route

Her father’s family hails from the sovereign Republic of San Marino in Northeast Italy. According to Censoni-Johnson, Nonna’s Noodles are a typical Northern Italian-type pasta, made with plenty of eggs, as opposed to a denser Southern Italian noodle made solely with semolina flour.

In January, Censoni-Johnson launched three types of flavored noodles in addition to the original recipe – spinach, sage and tomato paste.

Many home cooks are overwhelmed by perfecting the ratio of flour to water in homemade noodles, but Censoni-Johnson says it comes naturally to her since she was taught to judge with her hands.

She adds, “I use a lot of my body weight like massage therapists do, which helps, but with my new kitchen I’ll have a mixer to help me with a lot of that grunt work.”

Censoni-Johnson has advice in terms of cooking pasta – particularly Nonna’s Noodles.

To begin, “Don’t put any oil in the water. A lot of people think that if you put olive oil in the water the noodles won’t stick together, but what that does is it coats the surface of the pasta. And what you’re trying to create when you boil it is a starchy surface that holds the sauce better.

“So get a rapid boil going, put salt in the water if you want to, and make sure to keep a really close eye on your noodles. Don’t overcook them, and then drain and serve them immediately.”

Be on lookout for nonna

Last May, Censoni-Johnson moved into a commercial kitchen in Tigard and tripled her production level. With local shelf space and regular farmers market patrons who can’t get enough of Nonna’s Noodles, she’s already looking for a larger facility, with enough room for a small retail space.

If you’d like more noodle advice, Censoni-Johnson’s nonna may visit Portland this summer. If she does, you can bet she’ll share her noodle knowledge at at least one of the five farmers markets Censoni-Johnson regularly attends in the summer – Hillsdale, Interstate, Lake Oswego and the Portland Farmers Markets at PSU and Ecotrust.

Until then, through the winter you can purchase Nonna’s Noodles every other Sunday at the Hillsdale Farmers Market as well as at Steve’s Cheese (2321 N.W. Thurman St.).

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