Pull up to nearly any refrigerated grocery aisle and you’re bound to find a take on the classic tortellini. From a four-cheese concoction to spinach and ricotta, these mass-produced pastas are anything but artisanal. “Tortellini is made with one filling only,” says Giorgia Sinatra, creative director of L.
A.’s family-run restaurant Pasta Sisters, “which is the pork, mortadella, prosciutto di parma, parmigiano reggiano, nutmeg, and eggs.” Just the way Paoloa de Re, Sinatra’s mother and the chef behind Pasta Sisters, prepares it at the restaurant.
According to Sinatra, the meat-centric filling is one of the key components that go into an authentic artisanal tortellini. The other highlights include its unique ring-like shape and its precise weight of 5 grams. “You have to have a specific ratio between pasta and filling.
Usually, you have three grams of pasta for two grams of filling,” Sinatra notes. However, perfecting the meticulous measurements and navel-like shape of the tortellini is an intensive, time-consuming process that found the Pasta Sisters serving the dish only two months out of the year — December and January; the winter holiday season is when Italians traditionally served Tortellini al Brodo (tortellini in broth). Despite customer demands, the handmaking process was too much for the family-run restaurant to handle year-round.
That was until a trip to Italy in 2022, when a friend from Emilia-Romagna — the regional birthplace of tortellini — i.