The history of Orecchietta is strongly tied to our mother’s figure, Lisetta. She learnt the art of making fresh pasta when she was young,it was the tradition of country culture of Salento handed down from generation to generation.
I was born in a country family and I learnt my job from it. On Saturdays I remember that we met to prepare the home made fresh pasta. Mothers and daughters, grandmothers and nieces prepared “pizzarieddri and orecchiette” around the table for holiday days with their own wheat grew in their country. We learnt with a lot of patience and work to cultivate this old country custom that one day would let us be good family’s women and mothers.
When I was a girl and then when I was a mother, I have preserved the gift of this old knowledge always feeling the need to keep our traditions made of simple gestures and unique flavours.
In 1990 the need to safe the family typical traditions started. Then a small work-shop of home-made pasta was born in nearly 35 sqm in Provinciale Street in Guagnano; a lot of perseverance and wish to start guided me in order to create a dream of a real working chance.
In 1991 I turned this passion in a real home-made firm: in a small work-shop I only had a small table and a small iron needle but I was motivated by a lot of passion. My wish was that to keep the kwonledge and the typical taste of a tradition that, for the changes of family habits and working rhythms, risked to be lost. I also hope to transmit my own passion to my children and to share with them this dream. Immediately my small work-shop attracted the attention of a larger number of tourists who were curious and happy to discover this old job and to take away with them a piece of delicious cookery tradition of Salento.
Living in a country family let our mother learn, through direct experience and her work, all raw materials used in the creation of fresh pasta and local courses. A store of kwonledge and secrets that allowed her, since her first days of this experience, to create fresh, genuine products full of all the passion and love of a typical mother of Salento.
A contagious passion, that in 1999 let Lisetta and also our family grow together with it.
My family and my children have always attented our small work-shop, they were curious to learn and to discover, even when they were students they standed always by me in their free time ,too. Orecchietta has soon been a family business work-shop.
Today we are all involved in this job that we do with the same care and devotion which keeps the deepest and the most genuine soul of our territory.